CHAMI ASANKA PART 02

Get up, Rip Van Winkle; get up!
Tea took over from coffee after it fell to a type of leaf blight. But it took some time for James Taylor to pioneer ‘Ceylon Tea’ as a commercial product.

15 August 2016

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Thanks to foreign interest in growing tea in virgin soil and selling black tea produced abroad, a tea trade began to grow and tea planters and their principals who took up the gamble of planting tea became the major beneficiaries in an agro-business that became a major foreign exchange earner. Today, it still is. The country also benefited in other ways through the establishment of banks, shipping companies, businesses, road and rail networks and the slow but welcome development of laid-back villages and towns particularly in the highlands. It was the beginning of a long-term success story until the politics of some witless politicos bungled matters in an industry that employed thousands.