Sri Lanka to seek private finance for Expressway

Sri Lanka is planning to firm up private finance for a 1.5 billion US dollar expressway within two months, as the country seeks to connect the North and the East to Colombo, Treasury Secretary P B Jayasundera said.

"Inquiries are very much active on the now recognised Northern Expressway from Colombo which will connect Kandy, Kurunegala and taking the traffic to Trincomalee and the North," Jayasundera told reporters earlier this week.

"We are looking for private investment proposals. There are three serious proposals."

According to earlier reports investors from Korea, China and Malaysia have expressed interest in building the Colombo to Kandy track as a toll road. The 'Northern Expressway' however is a larger project.

"Hopefully within the next two months we will start looking at them and start evaluating to see how an expressway project can be worked out," Jayasundera said.

"And that's about a billion and a half project."

In September last year Malaysia's Construction Industry Development Board said that it has made a proposal to Sri Lanka's government involving multiple investors, reviving an original proposal made in 2003.

Cost estimates for the Colombo-Kandy section, which will be 98 kilometres long, had earlier been around one billion US dollars. With the end of terrorism in the North and the east plans to build expressways to the zones have now been expedited.

The current trace for the Colombo-Kandy expressway runs via Kurunegala. The plans for a 'Northern Expressway' include extending the Kandy track from Kurunegala to Dambulla. From Dambulla, one expressway will go up to Jaffna and and another, the 'Eastern Expressway' to Trincomalee, according to plans now being studied. The port city of Trincomalee in the East will also have an investment zone.

Other estimates for cost of the entire 'Northern Expressway' project up to Jaffna had ranged up to 4.5 billion US dollars.

Courtesy LBO