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| Wednesday, 16 July 2003 |
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BOI in aggressive infrastructure development strategy by Ravi Ladduwahetty The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) will pursue an aggressive medium term infrastructure development plan, which has hitherto been seen as a deterrent to promoting large scale investments. The absence of expressways and other appropriate infrastructure such as power and water have been cited as a major bugbear to promote large scale investments due to time lags in internal travel within Sri Lanka, BOI Chairman Arjunna Mahendran told the Daily News yesterday. A major Master Plan of the road network will be drawn which will be centred round building expressways, linking the north and the south and linking this network of expressways with the proposed landbridge between Talaimannar in Sri Lanka and Rameswaran in India. A preliminary study about a road network has been done by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). All these projects will be funded by the Asian Development Bank, he said. The BOI Chairman said that the negotiations for the Colombo Katunayake expressway was still on with all the shortlisted bidders as Road Builders of Malaysia, the firm which was originally selected has not been able to meet the eligibility criteria. He said that the construction work on the Colombo-Kandy expressway will commence within the next six months. There is a team of financial advisors from PriceWaterHouseCoopers from both India and Sri Lanka and the Asian Development Bank has undertaken to fund the study. Snowy Mountain Engineering of Australia will be the technical consultants to the project. The completion of the projet will ensure that travelling time between Colombo and Kandy will be forty-five minutes. Commenting on shipping infrastructure, he said, that the new Colombo South Port project was taking shape where negotiations were being held between the Ministry of Ports and Shipping for the construction of the new breakwater where twelve berths will be added on a Build-Own and Transfer (BOT) basis where investors will be called upon to build a berth each. He also said that there were possibilities of joint ventures between the local shipping community and multinationals such as P & O. He said that the consultancy on the Hambantota project has been completed and the construction work will commence in the fourth quarter of this year. This will also follow a competitive bidding procedure. He said that the Government was keen to pursue the 300 Megawatt coal fired plant and a team from the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) would be in Sri Lanka to recommend whether Trincomalee or Hambantota would be better. This team will be locating the site, he said. The proposed expansion of the airport will also see the addition of eight air bridges from the four gates which prevail now. The BOI will also be investing Rs. 600 million on an interceptor sewer which will drain all the pollutants from the Kelani Ganga due to protests from the National Water Supply and Drainage Board (NWSDB) that textile factories were emitting effluents. There had been positive inquiries from investors for the setting up of textile factories at Biyagama but had to be turned down due to protests from the NWSDB. We cannot afford to lose investors, he said. |
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