Category: Shipping and Transport

Dec 16, 2011 (LBO) – Construction work has begun on the first deep-water container terminal in a new harbour being built next to Sri Lanka’s Colombo port that will be owned and operated by a Chinese-led consortium. The 500 million US dollar South Container Terminal is to be built and operated by Colombo International Container […]

Dec 14, 2011 (LBO) – An Indian conglomerate is keen to acquire a stake in ports in Sri Lanka given its location and growth potential, an investment advisor from PricewaterhouseCoopers India told an investor forum in Colombo. Rapid infrastructure modernisation will be critical to achieve high levels of economic growth, he told the forum. Much […]

Dec 14, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has got Asian Development Bank aid to upgrade six access roads linking the newly opened southern expressway with the rest of the island’s road network, an ADB statement said. The ADB will give a loan of 85 million US dollars (about 9,347 million rupees) for the project to […]

Dec 08, 2011 (LBO) – About 5,000 vehicles are using Sri Lanka’s first expressway, the southern expressway, each day on average, Ranjith Pemasiri, the chairman of the road development authority, said. Revenue earned on weekends is about three million rupees a day. The southern expressway, which opened last month, cost about 70 billion rupees to […]

Dec 08, 2011 (LBO) – State-run Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) is building a 125 million US dollar berth in an expanded harbor in Colombo to fill a capacity gap until a Sino-Lanka joint venture comes on stream in 2014, an official said. Colombo International Container Terminal a joint venture between China Merchant Holdings and […]

Dec 07, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s road development agency is to build a flyover at the main entrance to Colombo port to ease traffic congestion caused by container trucks, a port official said. The island’s imports and exports have increased with economic growth accelerating to eight percent a year after the end of its […]

Dec 04, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka Ports Authority will invite more port related industries at Hambantota in the island’s south this month, after a first round brought a billion dollars of investments, chairman Priyath Bandu Wickrema said. The RFP will be open and investors could propose virtually any industry including manufacturing, assembly, packing and […]

Nov 30, 2011 (LBO) – Chinese contractors building a new port in southern Sri Lanka have finished blasting and clearing a rock blocking the entrance channel whose discovery after construction began had sent the project cost up sharply. The additional blasting and dredging required to clear the rock at the Hambantota port, which was officially […]

Nov 27, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa has opened the country’s first expressway running from the capital Colombo to the city of Galle, which will slash travel time to the south of the island. The 700 million US dollar expressway is built with loans from Japan and the Asian Development Bank. The […]

Nov 24, 2011 (LBO) – Japan will provide funding for an electronic toll collection ‘touch-and-go’ card system on Sri Lanka’s first expressway that is to be officially opened on November 27. The 95 kilometre southern expressway, linking the capital Colombo with the southern port town of Galle, is designed for 100 kilometres per hour speeds […]

Nov 18, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Colombo Dockyard said September 2011 quarter net profit fell 43 percent to 455 million rupees from a year ago as revenue from both ship building and repair came down. Sales of the yard, 51 percent owned by Japan’s Onomichi Dockyard Company, fell 27.7 percent to 3.5 billion rupees […]

Nov 18, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s first expressway has serious flaws that make 100 kilometres an hour travel unsafe, an organisation of transport professionals has warned, questioning whether safety features were compromised in cost cutting. The southern expressway linking the capital Colombo with the south is to be formally opened on November 27 and […]