Category: Industry
Ship Ahoy
Jan 30 (LBO) – Lanka Indian Oil Corporation has called for vessels to supply lubricant base oil for its new blending plant in the East of Sri Lanka, which is to begin production in June this year. Last week, the fuel retailer, a unit of India’s Fortune 500 Indian Oil Corp got a government licence […]
i-Switch
Jan 29 (LBO) – Sri Lankan tech firm Interblocks said Monday that they had implemented an ATM Switch and Monitoring system to manage Central Finance’s ATM network. The tie up with Interblocks and implementation of the iSwitch system would facilitate inter-branch settlement and reconciliation, remote monitoring and proactive alerts. The company says it is the […]
Brotherly Ties
Galle, January 29 (LBO) – Bilateral talks starting this week will further broaden economic ties between India and Sri Lanka, while aid volumes to the country was also moving up, an Indian government official told an aid forum here Monday. Sri Lanka was now India’s largest trade partner in South Asia with India being Sri […]
Sold Out
Jan 29 (LBO) – Asian Hotels and Properties, developers of the new Emperor Condominium at Crescat City, says it has found buyers for 80 percent of the apartments. The Singapore Piling and Civil Engineering (PTE) Ltd, has been awarded the construction contract for the new condominium AHPL said. A member of the John Keells Holdings […]
Turning Around
January 29, (LBO) – State Mortgage and Investment Bank has trimmed its non-performing loans sharply, the rating agency Fitch said, affirming the banks’ A (lka) rating with a stable outlook. Gross non-performing loans were cut down to 14.7 percent of gross loans by the third quarter of 2006, from 21 by the end of the […]
Raising Cash
January 29, (LBO) – Seylan Bank is raising cash to boost its capital through a debenture issue, the bank said. The Ceylinco group, owns 19 percent of its voting sahres, while several employee share ownership trusts of Seylan hold 27 percent of its voting equity, according to Fitch Ratings. The bank will issue listed, unsecured […]
Packet Search
January 26, (LBO) – Sri Lanka Telecom is investing 100 million dollars this year as part of a medium-term strategy to boost revenues from IP based services, migrate rapidly towards a packet-switched network, and drum up international business volumes, a top official said. “We want to increase business from non-traditional business to 70 percent over […]
Get Set
Jan 25, 2007 (LBO) – Mobitel is almost doubling its capacity to sign up 750,000 new subscribers, getting ready to cash in on a booming mobile phone market that saw 60 percent growth last year. Sri Lanka’s mobile market is estimated to have grown by 60 percent to 5.4 million subscribers in 2006. Mobitel, 100 […]
Positive Move
January 26, (LBO) – Fitch Ratings has upgraded National Development Bank’s credit outlook to positive from stable, but left the larger Commercial Bank’s outlook unchanged after the two firms said they were in talks to merge. It has 157 branches in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. NDB has assets of 59 billion rupees and is now […]
Petrol Tug
January 26, (LBO) – Ceylon Petroleum Corporation will purchase a tug to support tanker operations at its offshore petroleum unloading facility, a top official said.CPC Chairman Asantha de Mel says the tug is estimated to cost five million US dollars. “We will save about two million dollars a year that we are now paying to […]
Railway Estate
January 25, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka plans to raise over 1.2 billion dollars in foreign investments to develop real estate along a railway on the island’s western coastal belt, an official said Thursday. The railways operate at a huge loss with a revenue of three billion rupees each year against a state subsidy of […]
Brief Respite
January 25, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka plans to import more refined petroleum products as its sole refinery shuts down for routine maintenance next week, a top Ceylon Petroleum Corporation said Thursday.The Sapugaskanda refinery which has a daily output of 50,000 barrels producing a mix of diesel, kerosene, gasoline, furnace oil and naphtha, is closed […]