Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries is taking steps to cultivate king coconuts as an export crop. Minister Mahinda Amaraweera was quoted as saying: “There is demand in the United Arab Emirates for king coconut from Sri Lanka. 200 containers of king coconuts are exported to the country a month.”
The minister said that demand for king coconuts had recently tripled in the UAE coastal regions: “Many countries have tried to grow king coconut, but all those efforts have failed. The tastiest ones in the world are the Sri Lankan thembili. Therefore, steps will be taken to make our thembili popular in the world by branding it as Sri Lanka Sweet Coconut. The Coconut Development Board and the Coconut Development Authority will work on this.”
Sri Lanka exports 252,000 king coconuts a week to the UAE, it said.
Source: economynext.com