Mahindra and Mahindra to develop $ 200m IT Park

ANJANA SAMARASINGHE

The Mahindra and Mahindra Group of India will develop an IT park in Katunayake as a joint venture with the Board of Investment (BoI) Sri Lanka. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Minister of Investment Promotion Navin Dissanayake said this will facilitate the local IT industry. The IT Park will be near the Katunayake Zone. They expect to finalise the discussions end of this month.

Mahindra and Mahindra Group is also keen on investing in the Trinco Economic Zone and they have asked for a 3,000 acre land for the infrastructure project.

“We are making arrangements to provide land for their project. The total investment of this project will be nearly US $ 200 million,” he said.

“Mahindra and Mahindra Group is one of the largest companies in India with an annual turnover of US four billion. Two teams of the company met BoI officials recently,” he said.

BoI has approved 444 projects of an estimated value of Rs. 469,249 million during the first eight months of this year. The total employment generation capacity of these projects will be 71,216 and 93 projects have already commenced implementation.

BoI has approved 225 projects under the 300 factories programme up to now. The total investments are estimated at Rs. 68,544.4 million and an estimated 62,981 jobs will be created under this scheme.

Under this scheme agreements have been signed for 130 projects and 58 projects are now operational.

The Minister said Sri Lanka was able to attract US 264 million worth of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) during the first six months of this year. It was US 240 million in the first half of last year.

The country is targeting nearly US 700 million worth FDI this year. Malaysian investments have recorded US 144 million. It was the largest foreign direct investor during this period.

Hong Kong investments was reported at US 19.32 million and there was a US 13.36 million investment flow from Singapore.

There were US 12.28 million worth investments from Sweden and Italian investments was recorded at US 10.7 million.

Investment from USA has been recorded at US 8.69 million while UK has brought US 6.4 million worth of investments during the first half of this year.

Indian investments were reported at US 7.99 million during this period.