{"id":72896,"date":"2017-12-18T12:31:30","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T19:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=72896"},"modified":"2017-12-18T12:31:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T19:31:30","slug":"sri-lanka-appeals-to-russia-to-lift-temporary-tea-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/12\/18\/sri-lanka-appeals-to-russia-to-lift-temporary-tea-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka appeals to Russia to lift temporary tea ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"story-body__introduction\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy\u00a0 BBC<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Sri Lanka is making a special appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove a ban on Ceylon tea.<\/p>\n<p>Two ministers are leading a delegation to Moscow to request the suspension on Sri Lankan tea imports is lifted.<\/p>\n<p>Imports were halted last week after Russia found an insect known as the Khapra beetle in a tea consignment from Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka is determined to settle the issue as it maintains the discovery was an &#8220;isolated incident&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It is not clear whether the beetle, a known pest of rice and grain crops, was found alive or dead.<\/p>\n<p>President Maithripala Sirisena has urged Sri Lankan tea farmers not to panic, assuring them that the government would take necessary steps to settle the issue.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Sirisena told a rally on Sunday that he was optimistic that &#8220;as a friendly country&#8221;, Russia would help Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n<p>Plantation Minister Navin Dissanayake and Industry Minister Rishad Bathiudeen are leading the special delegation to Moscow to reassure the Russian government.<\/p>\n<p>Russia is one of the biggest importers of Sri Lankan tea, which accounts for nearly a quarter of its $436m (\u00a3326m) market.<\/p>\n<p>Sri Lanka has insisted that a thorough investigation will be carried out and that punitive measures will be taken against anyone found guilty of tampering with its consignment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy\u00a0 BBC Sri Lanka is making a special appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to remove a ban on Ceylon tea. Two ministers are leading a delegation to Moscow to request the suspension on Sri Lankan tea imports is lifted. Imports were halted last week after Russia found an insect known as the Khapra beetle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}