Bilateral Meeting with The Right Honourable Dinesh Gunawardena, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka

Colombo – FAO Director-General QU Dongyu had a meeting with The Right Honourable Dinesh Gunawardena, Prime Minister of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, on the margins of the 37th FAO Regional Ministerial Conference for Asia and the Pacific held in Colombo.

The Sri Lankan Prime Minister expressed his gratitude to the FAO Director-General for bringing the FAO Regional Ministerial Conference to Sri Lanka, and the long-standing partnership between the country and the Organization.

In view of the impacts of the climate crisis, the Prime Minister expressed that the current level of precipitation was only sufficient to store for the current month. He reiterated the importance of agriculture to generate income and stressed the importance of improved seeds for increased production. He shared details on a programme to provide state land to the farming community. The Prime Minister noted that currently farmers only had the capacity to produce the essentials, and that only in some cases could they produce a surplus. The Prime Minister stated that better planning for rural agriculture was needed and looked forward to increased support in this regard, as well as for sharing sustainable agricultural practices, for inland fisheries, and for the provision of solar power for farmers.

The Director-General expressed appreciation for the excellent collaboration between Sri Lanka and FAO. The Director-General praised Sri Lanka for their focus on increasing development and reiterated the need to produce more with less. QU also encouraged Sri Lanka to develop small and medium size aquaculture of prawns and to increase their production of high-quality tropical fruit through enabling policies, investment and technology, particularly exploring new varieties of tropical fruit. 

The Prime Minister underlined their desire to tap into the potential of using digital platforms for agriculture, as well as their commitment to combatting climate change.