National Plant Quarantine Service has taken numerous initiatives including electronic-phytosanitary certificate (e-phyto) system to facilitate international trade of plant commodities. However, it is evident that certain technical barriers may hinder the trade by adversely affecting at different level of the process.

An interactive workshop was held on 20 Dec 2021 at NPQS in order to identify such barriers using focuses group discussion as a tool so that immediate measures can be made to rectify these issues.

Thirty five representatives from coir product exporters, fruits and vegetables exporters and floriculture product exporters participated in this workshop and provided their views.

Dr WART Wickramaarachhci, Additional Director, NPQS, Project Director, ePhyto Project, Mr MFM Rizwan, Assistant Director of Agriculture (ADA), NPQS, Project Manager, ePhyto Project, Mr SSM Peramunage, ADA, NPQS, ADAs of NPQS and Plant Quarantine Station, BIA, Katunayake and the technical staff of NPQS facilitated the workshop as the resource persons.

The issues on ePhytos were identified thought forces group discussion analyzed by using two participatory tools known as  “Pair wise ranking tool and Pair wise comparison matrix tool”.  In Order to collect and analyses from the participants. The findings were further discussed with the stakeholder and the relevant staff of NPQS in order to find the effective solutions to overcome and provide better service by National Plant Quarantine Service.