Sri Lanka will grant long-term leases on 247 hectares of underutilised state plantation land to returning migrant workers and young entrepreneurs who have sent foreign exchange home, Cabinet spokesman Minister Nalinda Jayatissa said.
The land comes from three state-owned entities: 117 hectares from the Sri Lanka State Plantations Corporation, 88 hectares from the Janatha Estates Development Board and 42 hectares from Elkaduwa Plantations Limited.
Who qualifies
Priority goes to people who have worked overseas for three years or more within the past decade, or who are currently employed abroad and have been for over three years. Applicants must be no older than 50.
Individual allocations are capped between one and four hectares — a deliberate limit, Jayatissa said, to stop land being handed over without bounds and to keep the scheme aimed at small-scale investors rather than large private takeovers.
“The actual necessity here is to create an opportunity for Sri Lankans who went abroad, worked, and sent remittances to properly invest their money back in Sri Lanka under a structured system,” he said.
What the land can be used for
Approved sectors span agriculture, plantation tourism, livestock, hydroelectricity, solar power, factory manufacturing, freshwater fisheries and what the minister described as economic innovations.
“Approval was granted to formulate a suitable program to grant plots of underutilized land on a long-term lease basis, enabling young entrepreneurs who have remitted foreign exchange to invest in the plantation sector,” Jayatissa said.
He said the scheme should let workers returning from Korea, the Middle East and Europe put their earnings directly into local economic activity.
The decision gives concrete form to a directive President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued in July, when he instructed officials to design a land programme for migrant workers coming home from overseas employment.
