Sri Lanka’s Power Minister pays double for coal purchase: Udaya Gammanpila
June 16, 2015 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Power Minister is currently paying almost double for the purchase of coal at current world prices, Western Provincial Councilor Udaya Gammanpila charged.
Gammanpila, who broke away from the JHU at the last Presidential election, accuses his former ally Champika Ranawaka for intervening an alleged tender deal saying it is a mega deal.
According to Gammanpila, eight companies have forwarded their bids for a tender called for the purchase of 675,000 metric tons of coal on 08 April 2015.
“Three tenders were rejected due to major issues.
One tender was rejected since they were unable to present past experience for such a contract. So there were only four tenders to be evaluated,”
“But the Minister presenting a special cabinet paper has demanded the cabinet approval for three rejected firms to be considered again,”
“This means that the company, the minister wants to forward the contract is not included in the last four companies. It is in the rejected category.
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Gammanpila says it is illegal to violate tender procedure by seeking cabinet approval for rejected tenders.
“This will be unfair for the companies that forwarded proper tenders. These four companies can go to courts and get a restraining order. If that happened the CEB will have to purchase coal from the existing supplier.
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According to Gammanpila, there is only one supplier who supplies coal to the CEB since 2010.
“They invited tenders twice and selected the one with technical errors. The other person went to court. So the tender got cancelled. CEB tend to purchase coal from the 2010 supplier,”
Gammanpila emphasized that the prices of coal has come down by almost half against 2010.
“May be the Minister is trying to get coal from the existing supplier paying twice the price. Either way this is a mega deal.” Gammanpila stressed.
Organize to disorganize……No one has vote base…
I agree 100% with you on that comment, That’s why I keep saying
“We don’t need a bridge with India, but we want a Wall with India”. Indian interventions in Sri Lanka create political and security issues in unimaginable magnitudes, even today some stupid Sinhalese blame West for LTTE and never understands that India was the culprit responsible for creating LTTE in Sri Lanka.
Latter in his tenure Mahinda Rajapaksha used Chinese as a counterweight to balance the Indian influence but Yahapalana Gang threw that strategy right after they got elected. I’m no fan of Mr. Rajapaksha but I think finally he got it right with India. And unfortunately for Sirisena, he needs top notch educations about foreign policy and strategical maneuvers to understand the danger Sri lanka is in…..
You can not become like other countries you mentioned as long as you are closer to India. Look at all countries around India.
When Sri Lanka then Ceylon got their independence from British in 1948 only Japan had more advanced economy and infrastructure in Asia. In other words, we were only second to Japanese by a small statistical margin.
Since 1948 we saw South Korea a country filled with fishermen and farmers living in slums; Singapore a swamp, a marsh, a quagmire with small fishing camps; Malaysia, a palm and rubber estate, growing cocoa as a supplementary income; Taiwan and Hong Kong small coastal areas with fishery as only available means of income, go pass us and became developed or higher middle income countries. And here we are still lagging behind and accusing each other for our shared national misfortune.
Currently I am looking towards Vietnam, which offer much more lucrative and stable Investment opportunities to North Americans who wants to cash in for glitzy frontier market growth. I genuinely fear that Vietnam also will surpass Sri Lanka and become a developed country in our life time may be even sooner than we think.
The Formula for rapid economic growth is well known but rarely used in countries like Sri Lanka, the bottom line is without changing the structure of governance and administration, the economic development will forever be a mirage. Smaller Government and Larger Private/ Citizen participation is the only way our of this long standing misery, abolish Provincial Councils, bring down the number of Members of Parliament, reduce the number of Ministries and Ministers, encourage public/private partnerships, Cut corporate taxes and facilitate more business friendly environment……But first have a political will and ironclad resolution not to allow petty party politics to mess-up everything you have started.
This is not rocket science-plenty of examples of low income economies growing:
1.Decrease the size of government and spending, including subsisdies
2.removing income tax
3 have a broad-based VAT
4.decrease regulations
5.policies to encourage investment
6.encourage temp. Import of experienced labour, with fixed contracts
If the present parliment(every one govt,opposition,indipendents) wants good governance they should first enact the citizens right to know bill.Until then charges & count charges will be the order of the day with out any meaningful outcomes.
All of a sudden GammangPillai has realized that tenders have to be called and the render procedure can not be influenced. Was he sleeping during Rajapaksa regime when no tenders were called for any conteract! None so ever!
Something tells me chair of coal company Maithree Gunaratne is the rogue here.
Major slimeball.
Champika has no right to stand in the parliament against policies which he was elected for. Now Champika is backing GTF, LTTE, Gay boys and seperatists completly forgeting the heritage of Helayas. He did not spell any against Chandrika’s or any other ststements against Helayas now.
Gammanpila who knows every thing except the fact that he won’t get a chance to enter parliament in this birth.