Sri Lanka's state-owned dairy company Milco said it has started to make profits after three loss-making years.

“We identified that there was an issue concerning trust between the institution and dairy farmers. First, we restored it. It was the first priority. Farmers had not got money for their supplies on time. We corrected that. We took steps to improve their income. We gave a bonus of Rs.5 per liter to farmers from the additional income we got by increasing the price of Yoghurt by five rupees. We kept farmers with us in that way.

“We worked out our corporate plan and started monitoring its implementation. When monitoring, we observed whether there was any variance between our target and turnout on a daily basis. We strived hard to minimize this variance. We looked for reasons for any variance and took management measures to correct it. We made the institute transparent. Then, the employees started living up to the target given to them. We minimised the downtime of machines. We identified the reason for machine downtime,” its Chairman Lasantha Wickremasinghe said.