The Ministry of Plantation and Community Infrastructure will launch a national programme called “Ceylon King Coconut Village” on Wednesday at the Coconut Cultivation Board’s Mahayaya Estate in the Kurunegala District, Ada Derana reported.
The programme aims to expand king coconut cultivation, raise production and productivity, and widen export markets for king coconut and related products.
250 villages over three years
The plan is to establish 250 king coconut villages island-wide: 75 this year, 80 in 2027 and 95 in 2028.
The first-phase 75 villages span 17 districts — Monaragala, Matara, Kurunegala, Kegalle, Gampaha, Kalutara, Puttalam, Ratnapura, Hambantota, Anuradhapura, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa, Ampara, Matale, Galle, Batticaloa and Kandy.
The targets
By 2030 the ministry wants annual king coconut production up by 25 million nuts and export revenue from king coconut and related products up by more than US$12 million.
The planting programme behind that is specific. For 2026: 20,300 existing trees rehabilitated and 37,500 new saplings planted. Across 2026–2028: 212,500 new saplings and 221,500 rehabilitated trees.
What growers are offered
Two subsidies carry the scheme.
Farmers rehabilitating existing king coconut trees receive Rs. 700 per tree. For new cultivation, a sapling costs Rs. 750, but growers will be supplied at a subsidised Rs. 150 each — the state absorbing Rs. 600, or 80% of the cost.
The programme also covers irrigation for 500 acres of king coconut cultivation and the creation of a formal data system registering growers, collectors and exporters. The ministry says it expects to improve living standards for 21,250 families through income and employment in cultivation, collection, transport, processing and export.
The scale is modest against the ambition
The arithmetic is worth setting out, because the announcement pairs a large headline with a small planting base.
212,500 new saplings over three years is a limited planting programme by plantation standards, and new king coconut palms take years to bear. Most of the targeted 25 million additional nuts by 2030 would therefore have to come from the 221,500 rehabilitated trees — roughly 113 additional nuts per rehabilitated tree per year — rather than from new planting. Ada Derana’s report does not set out that split, give a programme cost, or say how the Rs. 700 and Rs. 150 subsidies are funded. (A cost for the current year — Rs. 405 million — emerged at the launch on 2 September; see the update below. A total three-year cost has still not been published.)
Nor does it name the export markets in view, give a baseline for current king coconut production or export earnings against which the 25 million nuts and US$12 million would be measured, or say which agency will run the grower registry.
Update (September 2–3): the programme launches, with a cost attached
The programme was launched on Wednesday, 2 September at the Coconut Cultivation Board’s Mahayaya Estate in Kurunegala, timed to coincide with World Coconut Day, according to the Daily Mirror and a later Ada Derana report.
The Daily Mirror’s account supplies the figure missing from the original announcement: around Rs. 405 million has been allocated for the programme this year. It also adds two design details not previously reported — that each village is to have one micro-processing facility, and that each of the 75 villages planned for 2026 will carry around 500 to 1,000 trees.
At the launch, subsidy cheques, king coconut and coconut plants, whitefly-control equipment and agricultural machinery were distributed to growers, and certificates were presented to growers and exporters. More than 600 growers from the Kurunegala and Gampaha districts attended.
Those present included Plantation and Community Infrastructure Minister Samantha Vidyaratne, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Livestock Namal Karunaratne, Minister of Rural Development, Social Security and Community Empowerment Dr. Upali Pannilage and North Western Province Governor Tissa Kumarasiri. The programme is being run with the Coconut Cultivation Board, the Coconut Development Authority and other sector institutions.
The market case the ministry is making
Speaking at the launch, Pannilage put the global market for king coconut water-related products at US$4 billion to US$5 billion, and said it is expected to roughly double to nearly US$10 billion over the next decade. The programme, he argued, gives Sri Lanka an opportunity to take a meaningful share of that growth while raising rural incomes and creating employment.
He set the case in the context of the trade deficit, saying Sri Lanka earned nearly US$14 billion from merchandise exports last year and US$17.2 billion in total including services, IT and tourism, against nearly US$22 billion spent on imports.
That framing invites a comparison the ministry did not make. The programme’s own export target is an additional US$12 million a year by 2030 — against a goods trade gap on those figures of roughly US$8 billion. The initiative is a rural livelihoods programme with an export component, not a measure of a scale that would move the trade balance.
The Rs. 405 million allocation is for 2026 only. Neither report gives a total three-year cost, and none of the three reports names the export markets in view or gives a baseline for current king coconut production or earnings.
Corroboration
The original 1 September announcement was carried only by Ada Derana. The Daily Mirror covered the launch itself on 2 September, and Ada Derana followed with a second report on 3 September. The launch did not appear on the NewsFirst, Hiru News, Daily FT or EconomyNext listings.
Context
King coconut has been treated as a garden crop rather than a plantation crop in Sri Lanka, and earlier attempts to commercialise it have been village-scale pilots rather than national programmes. The wider coconut sector has been under a separate reform push, including a floor price mechanism and a 2030 production target.
The launch also lands in a difficult season for cultivation. The Agricultural and Agrarian Insurance Board reported in August that dry weather had damaged nearly 8,000 acres of crops across five districts, and an MP has warned that weak rainfall may persist. Irrigation availability is the constraint the programme’s 500-acre component addresses directly.
