• National Floriculture Development Program commenced.
• A relief package for Floriculturists Island wide.

National Floriculture Development Program has been commenced. It is implemented by the Department of National Botanic Gardens which is functioning under the Ministry of Tourism. The aim of the project is to uplift the living standards of the rural people through the floriculture sector, says the Minister of Tourism, Prasanna Ranatunga.

Providing technical knowledge and high quality planting material to floriculturists, supply of high quality imported parent plants for cultivation, providing market links, providing shade nets required for infrastructure development of nurseries, training programs and seminars and workshops for floriculturists, assistance for holding flower exhibitions are carried out under this program. Also, canopies/ tents are provided to floriculturists in order to set up stalls for sale.

At present there are about 200 Suwahas Mal Societies island wide. There are about 8000 floriculturists of those flower societies. Minister, Prasanna Ranatunga also stated that he hopes to expand the setting up of Suwahas Mal Societies at the village level in the future.

Sri Lanka's share in the world floriculture market is about 1%. About 60% of Sri Lanka's floriculture exports go to the Western countries and the rest go to Japan, the Middle East and Korea. Flower exports earned US $ 16.27 million in 2019, US $ 11.31 million in 2020 and US $ 15.09 million in 2021. 120 registered exporters including 45 large scale export companies are engaged in flower export in Sri Lanka. The number of small and medium scale growers engaged in floriculture sector is around 10,000 and the number of indirect beneficiaries is over 100,000. Minister, Prasanna Ranatunga further stated that the government has taken steps to implement short term, medium term and long term programs to develop this flower export sector.