The national event of planting trees at the auspicious time for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year-2023 will be held on April 20 at 6.38 a.m. countrywide under the guidance of the Ministry of Agriculture.
All 225 Parliamentarians will be offered valuable fruit plants to take part in this national event as this is a very important tradition among the other rites and rituals related to the New Year celebrations in Sri Lanka.
This program will be coordinated by all District Secretaries and Divisional Secretaries on April 20, Agriculture Minister Mahinda Amaraweera told the Sunday Observer.
Nearly 10 million plants are to be planted on April 20 at 6.38 a.m. to mark the New Year tradition.
Minister Amaraweera said that the Government has planned to be away from the distribution process of fertiliser among paddy cultivators during this Maha season and that the distribution process will be handed over to the private sector to be carried out more efficiently and systematically at national level.
However, the Government will offer a considerable amount of money as subsidies to the farmers to cover their expenditure incurred in purchasing chemical fertiliser, insecticides and weedicides, seed paddy and other agricultural requirements. For that, each farmer will be provided with a QR code for them to get services expeditiously.
A sum of Rs.13 billion has been allocated by the Government to purchase paddy from farmers this year. The paddy purchasing will be carried out through the District Secretaries and Divisional Secretaries and not by the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB).
The paddy purchased will be turned into rice and distributed among 2.8 million low income families free.
Accordingly, each family will get 10 kilos of rice monthly for two months. Distribution of rice will be done at district level, the Minister said.