Govt will develop shipping sector - Chamal Rajapaksa

The following speech was delivered by the Chief Guest, Ports and Aviation Minister Chamal Rajapaksa at the fifth Annual General Meeting of the Asian Shippers' Council at the Hilton Colombo last week.

This is the first ever major International Shippers' Conference to be held in Sri Lanka since liberalizing of the shipping industry in 1979. This meeting is held in Colombo at a time when the Government has embarked on the mission to develop the Shipping and Aviation sectors.

The Chairman of the Asian Shippers' Council has intimated to all the Asian countries that Colombo and Sri Lanka are now secure and safe to have a conference of this nature. This shows the confidence placed on us by the regional shippers. I thank the ASC Chairman and the delegates for their confidence placed on us.

The most courageous decisions and bold steps were taken by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to wipe out terrorism from our soil, which no other terrorist affected country has succeeded in doing so.

In this exercise, our aim was to create a peaceful environment and a country for the exporters as well as others. This also creates opportunities for everyone to attend to their normal course of business without any fear and with great confidence.

Exports contribute a lot to the GDP and brings valuable foreign exchange. The Government is geared to facilitate the exporters and importers, enabling the maximum benefit to the country. The Sri Lanka Shippers Council represents more than 95 percent of the import/ export trade in Sri Lanka. Your contribution to the Sri Lankan economy is very important and significant in the past, present and also in the future. Therefore, the Government's endeavour is to do everything possible to develop the shipping sector.

To secure these aspirations, the Government has already created a terrorism free environment, suitable for the shipping industry including import/export sectors.

To provide more shipping opportunities the Government is developing new projects such as the Colombo South Port, Hambantota Port, Oluwil Port, Galle Port, Trincomalee Port and the International Airport at Mattala in Hambantota.

We are now in the process of fulfilling this mission of accelerating our development projects in this sector. Today, we are building the largest container terminal extension project in South Asia by building a state-of-the-art port known as the "South Harbour" adjacent to the existing harbour in Colombo, which you will be able to see in the very near future.

The new port will facilitate new generation deep draft ships and will be installed with container terminal capacity of over seven million TEUs in the coming years. At the same time, we are building the first ever mega Industrial Port in the Southern City of Hambantota, which has been a need of this country for so many years, to move ahead in the maritime sector. On the Aviation Industry, whilst expanding the Bandaranaike International Airport to handle greater volumes of passengers, we will be constructing the country's second international airport in the Hambantota district to further facilitate the regional aviation industry.

These measures would largely support shippers and all other maritime and aviation related services and put Sri Lanka in the path of becoming a globally competitive logistics hub.

My Ministry is also monitoring shipping activities and will develop a mechanism to regulate freight forwarders and NVOCC operators (Non vessel operators common carriers) to provide shipping services to the industry.

I have taken steps to regulate the Internal freight stations and terminal operators to maintain the standards. This will help the shippers and shipping lines to get better services at competitive rates. Most of the proposals and suggestions to develop the maritime and aviation sector put forward by the stakeholders are addressed in the National Policy on Ports, Aviation and Shipping, which will be forwarded to the Cabinet of Ministers very soon.

The Government and I, as the Minister in charge of Ports and Aviation, under the guidance of the President, have taken the challenging task of fulfilling his vision under the Mahinda Chintana to make Sri Lanka a truly global hub in the Shipping and Aviation fields.

We are confident, that the international Community will appreciate our efforts in these development activities. I hope that the global investor community will make use of this golden opportunity to come and position themselves in Sri Lanka in the logistics, shipping and aviation sectors. Our Government believes that the potential for this industry is enormous, as Asia will be the global power house in trade, once the current global economic crisis subsides.

We also invite the private sector to join the Government's efforts to accelerate development, as we have lost valuable time due to terrorism. Therefore, it is our duty to catch up and position ourselves where we should be and I am determined, as the Minister in charge of Ports and Aviation Sector, to hand over a better and prosperous country to our future generations, he said.