Import of certain agrochemicals allowed under licence

The Finance Ministry has issued a gazette notification allowing the importation of certain agrochemicals including a range of herbicides under special import license regulations after 6th of this month.

The Gazette was issued under the Imports and Exports (Control) Act, on May 6 by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in the capacity of Minister of Finance.

According to the gazette, importation of certain insecticides, herbicides including glyphosate as well as certain nitrogenous and potassic mineral or chemical fertilizers and nitrogenous, would be legal. However, certain agrochemicals were not listed either under the banned list or the positive list.

The Department of Imports and Exports also issued operating instructions to commercial banks not to proceed with any items that are not allowed under the gazette notification and without a valid import control licence.

Meanwhile, the government is yet to announce the date on when the proposed ban would come into force in terms of usage in chemical fertilizers and agrochemicals.

The Minister of Agriculture, Mahindananda Aluthgamage recently stressed that the government policy is to ban all imports of chemical fertilizers and agrochemicals in order to move into organic farming.

According to him, the country has already sufficient resources to manufacture organic phosphate and potassium based fertilizer.

The minister expects to meet nitrogen fertilizer requirement through resources from the country’s sea beds, waste collections of local governments and animal waste in poultry and diary industries.

At the local government level, the government plans to setup separate firms to manufacture organic fertilizer, in addition to large-scale organic fertilizer projects.

Sri Lanka has 16 registered organic fertilizer producers, as per the Agriculture Ministry.

In outlining one of the reasons behind the announced ban, Aluthgamage cited that excessive application of fertilizers by paddy farmers while misusing the State subsidy was among key reasons. “We only imported 0.6 metric tones of chemical fertilizer during 2015-16, when the government withdrew the fertilizer subsidy. Once the subsidy was reinstated, farmers increasingly misused the subsidy and increased fertilizer application. The fertilizer usage increased by 100 percent to 1.3 million metric tones,” he stressed.

Sabaragamuwa University Professor Priyantha Yapa claims that 62 percent of the country’s arable land has become infertile due to excessive chemical fertilizer and agrochemical application. However, this is disputed by other experts in the field.

While fully embracing the announced ban, he also identifies chemical fertilizers as one of key reasons for a range of diseases in Sri Lanka including cancer, hormone imbalances and infertility.