Category: Industry
Port Race
Sept 16, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is hoping to call fresh bids for a container terminal concession in an expanded port in Colombo in October, a government minister said, after an earlier bidding round was abandoned partway through the process. A breakwater to expand Colombo port is now being built with Asian Development Bank […]
Sri Lanka Taj unit gets new manager
Sept 15, 2008 (LBO) – India’s Taj Group says it has appointed a new manager to the 120-room Taj Airport Garden Hotel in Seeduwa, north of the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, which is one of three hotels run by the group in the island. Mathew C Thomas has taken over as general manager from Sanjay […]
Latest Blow
WASHINGTON, September 15, 2008 (AFP) – US investment giant Lehman Brothers announced its bankruptcy early Monday as the Federal Reserve and major global banks moved to shore up financial market shaken by the housing and mortgage crisis.The Wall Street Journal warned in an editorial Monday that Americans should brace themselves for “a very rough Monday.” […]
New Printing
FRANKFURT, September 15, 2008 (AFP) – The European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE) poured billions into money markets on Monday to ensure sufficient liquidity in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.He said he thought the Fed would try to avoid this step, which would be a “reversal of the […]
Bunker Losses
Sept 15, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s John Keells Holdings says its bunkering unit lost 20 million rupees (184,000 US dollars), because it was unable to remove all oil stocks by a court deadline of September 12, after it was ordered to vacate a tank farm.The company said oil stocks valued 45 million rupees (416,000 […]
Credit Shuffle
Sept 15, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s state-run petroleum utility Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) is covering overdue government accounts with an Iranian credit, but its finances are too fragile to cut prices, a top official said.Iran has given the CPC a rolling credit to cover four months of imports interest free and another three months […]
Pricing Politics
Sept 14, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lankan fuel users are suffering from the lack of a transparent price formula and severe politicization of pricing that had sometimes caused high inflation and balance of payments troubles in the island. Diesel users are mostly commercial enterprises and super rich sections of society including politicians who are allowed […]
Bunker Move
Sept 14, 2008 (LBO) – Lanka Marine Services (LMS), a unit of John Keells Holdings selling bunkers in Colombo port, has moved out most of its stocks from a tank farm by the court ordered deadline of September 12, a media report said.The Sunday Times quoting sources at Sri Lanka’s revenue office said, it had […]
Sri Lanka power utility to start net metering
Sept 11, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s power distributors are to start net metering, where customers would be able to generate small amounts of renewable energy, ‘export’ to the national grid, and only pay for the ‘net’ amount of electricity used.A note to cabinet said the proposal would encourage customers to generate their own electricity […]
Cyber Education
Sept 12, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is starting post-graduate university courses using broadband mobile links provided by Mobitel, a celco, to remotely lecture students, officials said.The mobile learning of ‘mlearning’ system was developed by the University of Colombo, Mobitel and the IT firm Microsoft. “This is a hybrid system of learning, which includes traditional […]
Bank Rating
Sept 11, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Fitch Ratings has confirmed the ‘AA(lka)’ rating of state-run Bank of Ceylon, with ‘stable’ outlook, and said its exposure to the government had fallen, though it remained high.Fitch said the bank’s ‘Individual’ rating at ‘D/E’ and ‘Support’ rating at ‘4’, reflected its systemic importance as the largest bank […]
Exploration Spend
Sep 11, 2008 (LBO) – Cairn India said its Sri Lanka unit had signed a deal with Sri Lanka’s investment promotion office to cover a 110 million US dollar oil exploration program. The company was given an off-shore exploration block in the north western Mannar Basin of the island. “The Mannar basin is a frontier […]