Commonwealth Games bid investment not in vain

Sri Lanka, H’tota marketed to the world:

Shirajiv SIRIMANE in St. Kitts

The investments made for the Commonwealth Games 2018 bid was not in vain as both Hambantota and Sri Lanka were marketed to over nearly three billion people in the world.

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) has a population in excess of 2.1 billion people. Over 1890 newspapers from all over the world also wrote on Hambantota and Sri Lanka.

In addition to this many other countries all over the world including Germany, Russia, China, Korea and Japan and Gulf nation’s sports fans followed the proceedings thus giving free mileage to the country. The Commonwealth Games website had nearly two million hits which further helped to market Sri Lanka and particularly Hambantota. “Hence Sri Lanka is not a loser,” said the central bank Governor and Co Chairman of the Commonwealth Games Bid Committee Team, Ajith Nivard Cabraal. He said that this has opened up new windows of opportunities to both tourism and investments. “Sri Lanka does not have to identify itself when conducting road shows and investments missions overseas,” he added.

The Governor said that Hambantota is to be developed as one of the most developed cites in the world and the latest international sporting and MICE tourism area.

“Our bid to host the Commonwealth Games in 2018 would give confidence to investors as they saw the development taking place in both sports and infrastructure,” he said. “The message what we gave to the world was that Sri Lanka could host events in the magnitude of the Commonwealth Games and the Hambantota infrastructure is getting into place ahead of time.

“We have already got the RoI from the games bid,” he said. Chemanex Chairman and The Finance Company Managing Director Preethi Jayawardene said that from a business point of view Sri Lanka was opened up to the world and this creates opportunities for the business sector as well.

He said that he likes to spread his wings out of Sri Lanka and this has definitely helped them to do so. “The fact that we made a bid against a developed nation such as Australia and came close to winning augurs well for the country,” he said.

He said from a country perspective this bid would certainly help the country to increase its FDIs and help to find more investors for both the international harbour and airport being built in Hambantota.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Partner, Sujeeva Mudalige said that this was the first that the private sector and the government got together to canvass for an event of this nature. “our objective was to market the country and also give an opening for the youth and we are happy we could get that done,” he said.

He said that this same combination would ensure that the much talked about games model of Hambantota would be put into structures and keep its promise. “By not awarding the Games the CGF played into a monopoly of five nations and eventually it is the CGF that is the loser,” he said.

Suresh De Mel representing Bluechip Technical Services said that they are sad that emerging nations are not given an opportunity and out of the 21 Games held sofar, Australia, Canada, England and New Zealand have hosted it 18 times. Only Malaysia, India and Jamaica hosted it once.

MP Namal Rajapaksa said irrespective of the result they would go ahead to build the international sports city in Hambantota where it would have the standard even to host an Olympics.

At the vote where 70 CGF countries voted Sri Lanka got 27 and Australia 43 last Friday.