Sri Lanka Cultivates Mannar ‘Rice Bowl’ After the Defeat of Rebels, Central Bank Predicts Economy to Grow by 6 Percent in 2010

17th November 2009, www.bloomberg.com, By Paul Tighe

Sri Lanka said it is cultivating the rice-producing area in Mannar after clearing mines from the northwestern region captured from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam before the group’s defeat in May.

The mine clearing allowed 7,000 additional acres (2,833 hectares) to be cultivated recently and another 7,000 acres will be converted for rice growing once water storage levels rise, the government said on its Web site, citing Major General G.A. Chandrasiri, the governor of Northern Province.

The so-called Mannar “Rice Bowl” produced a record harvest in 1991 before falling to 23rd out of the 27 rice- growing areas listed by the government before the region was captured from the Tamil Tigers in June 2008.

The LTTE’s 26-year fight for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’s north and east ended in May when the last Tamil Tiger fighters were defeated in a battle in the northeast.

While the government forecasts economic growth of about 3.5 percent this year as the country rebuilds after the war, Sri Lanka and other Asian rice growers may have reduced rice harvests because of late monsoon rains, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization.

World rice production may fall 3 percent to 668 million metric tons this year, from a record last year, the FAO said last month. Asia’s output may drop 4 percent to 601 million tons this year from a year earlier, it said.

Sri Lanka’s central bank forecasts that the island’s $41 billion economy will grow as much as 6 percent in 2010.

Fertile Fields

The Defense Ministry said soldiers captured 120 square kilometers (46 square miles) of land in the Mannar district in June last year, saying at the time the area “mainly consists of the island’s most fertile paddy fields.”

An estimated 1.5 million mines and unexploded ordnance contaminated 500-square kilometers of the north when the war ended, the army said last month.

About 65 percent of that area is inhabited by civilians and 25 percent is agricultural land, Lieutenant General Jagath Jayasuriya, the country’s army commander, told a seminar in the capital, Colombo.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government has cited the need to clear mines and ensure security in the north as a reason for delaying the release of more than 280,000 mainly Tamil civilians taken into transit camps when the war ended.

More than half of the refugees have been settled in their areas of origin, leaving 137,000 in the centers, the government said two days ago.

Resettlement Program

The resettlement program may be completed by the end of January next year, Sri Lanka said two days ago. About 28,000 people have been returned to homes in the Kilinochchi district in the north, the Defense Ministry said. The area was heavily mined as the LTTE had its headquarters in Kilinochchi town.

The UN, U.S. and U.K. have called on the government to allow the refugees to leave as soon as possible. John Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, begins a two-day visit to the country today to assess progress in the resettlement program.

The LTTE’s international network still operates and peace in the country won’t be secured until it’s dismantled, Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa said at the weekend.

Countries criticizing Sri Lanka are expecting changes “to happen overnight,” the secretary said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net.

Image: Giant's Tank, Mannar