Coconut shortage in SL ( pics:Tamil.com)

By: Prasanna C. Rodrigo

Lack of a mechanism to store coconut oil has resulted in Sri Lanka having to import coconut to meet the shortage and control the prices in the local market.

Dr. Jayantha Gunathilaka, the Chief Agronomics of the Coconut Research Institution says “we need to establish a mechanism to store coconut oil during the bumper harvest”

He says the current shortage in coconut is a byproduct of high prices charged for coconut oil in the global market.

“A heavy drought experienced by some of the South American countries has affected their Soya bean oil production”, added Gunathilaka.

This situation he points out has created a demand for coconut oil in the global market thus pushing prices up.

Here in Sri Lanka 3 sectors are competing to buy coconuts.

Among them are nuts purchased for culinary work, desiccated coconut production and also for oil production.

He said due to high prices offered by DC millers and Oil producer’s, farmers tend to sell their nuts to those sectors to fetch a good price.

In the local market a nut price has gone beyond Rs. 50, thus resulting in some people buying half out of a nut.

One vendor in capital Colombo has started selling scraped coconut in small quantities.

Shortage in 2011

Dr. Gunathilaka warns that there will be a shortage during the next year as well.

However he says before that Sri Lanka will experience a “bumper harvest” during the March to September period.

The official notifies that Authorities need to capitalize on this situation and store coconut oil during this period.

He added “If we can store coconut oil during the bumper harvest we can overcome the possible shortage during next year”.

Sri Lanka last year produced 2932 million nuts and this year the production has gone down by 7%.

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