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The fast road to development

In Japan, the Shinkansen literally travels like a bullet, covering 300 Km in about one hour. In Sri Lanka, even the fastest intercity train takes about two and a half hours to cover 115 Km. The road journey takes even longer.

This is the stark reality that Sri Lankans encounter everyday. Pot-holed roads, an erratic electricity and water supply and a telecommunications network still struggling to expand services to the interior paint a bleak picture of our infrastructure. A creaking infrastructure has not helped the country in its ambition to become an economic powerhouse in Asia.

However, there are signs that corrective action is being taken on a fast-track basis with foreign assistance. Travel time to Kandy by road will be a mere 55 minutes when the Colombo-Kandy expressway opens. The Sri Lankan Government last week took the first step towards constructing the Kandy expressway costing Rs.28 billion by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Malaysian government, during Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's official visit. A Malaysian consortium will undertake the construction of the expressway.

Similarly, the government is going ahead with Katunayake and Matara expressways which will drastically cut the journey times to the Bandaranaike International Airport and to the South. Preliminary measurement work has begun on the Outer Colombo Ring Road, which will connect to the Southern Expressway at Kottawa and to the Katunayake expressway at Mattumagala.

These four projects alone will have enormous implications for the country's economy. They will cost billions of rupees, but the benefits will far exceed the financial outlay as both goods and people can be transported faster. The ripple effect on the rural economy should also not be under-estimated.

The ceasefire and the peace process have acted as catalysts to spur infrastructure development, especially with regard to the entry of foreign investors to this sector. Indeed, the Government is planning to disburse peace dividends among the people through a major development drive titled 'Take your share of peace' to be implemented at a cost of Rs 17.4 billion during the next 18 months.

The development programme targeting rural electrification and road development is expected to benefit a large number of residents of rural areas. The rural electrification project will increase the total number of households with national grid power to 72 per cent. Under the accelerated programme to develop rural roads, each electorate will be given Rs.2 million by the Treasury.

These two laudable projects will provide infrastructure facilities to areas that need them most. The Western Province has been the focus of infrastructure development for several decades, at the expense of other areas. The new initiatives are likely to redress this imbalance.

The war-torn North-East has been almost entirely neglected in terms of infrastructure development, but this is about to change thanks to the US$ 4.5 billion pledged by the international community in Tokyo in June. They reaffirmed their aid commitment last week in Colombo, stressing that progress in peace talks would be vital to make the projects effective and viable. Experts have urged the authorities to allocate a considerable slice of the aid package for infrastructure development in the North-East and elsewhere.

Basic infrastructure facilities should be augmented by the overall development of the transport, energy and telecommunications sectors. Railways, ports, airports, power plants and telecom facilities must be developed rapidly to turn Sri Lanka into an attractive investment and leisure destination which is second to none in Asia.

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