‘Country must be prepared for huge income’

Hambantota Port to be main Asian shipping hub:

Ramani Kangaraarachchi

The Hambantota Port will be the main shipping hub in the Asian region within two to three years time and the country must be prepared now itself for this huge income at the Port, Master Divers Chairman, Ariyaseela Wickramanayake told Daily News Business.

He said that there will be more ships entering the Hambantota Port daily compared to twelve ships entering the Colombo harbour at present.

The Singapore harbour has no land to expand any more whereas Sri Lanka has 10,000 hectares.

This is highly underutilized land and situated in close proximity to international shipping routes. All large ships will enter the Hambantota Port for repairs and to obtain oil and other services.

Therefore the country will have a lot of advantages which will create a large number of employment opportunities in various fields such as thermal power generation, oil refining and the petrochemical industry, the coal fired power plant, bunkering services, coal transshipment and distribution, ship building and repair activities bulk cargo and services general cargo, fishing activities and export of fish products and container traffic.

However, the infrastructure, transport and skilled and unskilled labour will be required and the authorities and people must prepare for this, he said. The large ships that used to go to Singapore for oil will call over at Hambantota in the future.

The Port will be developed initially to cater to the industrial and service sector and later for container traffic. Containers over 10,000 TEU which cannot enter the Colombo harbour will be airfreighted via the Hambantota airport, he said.