Category: Shipping and Transport

Aug 25, 2011 (LBO) – Bunkering at Hambantota port in Sri Lanka’s South is to start next month after spending 40 million dollars to demolish a rock blocking the entrance, a media report said. “This rock was identified before we started the port construction,” Sri Lanka Ports Authority Chairman Priyath Wickrama was quoted as saying […]

Aug 25, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port needs extra loans of 147.9 million dollars to cover equipment including cranes, cost escalations in building the port, and digging the basin and entrance channel, the island’s state-run ports agency said. Responding to media reports and critics, Sri Lanka Ports Authority said the port in the […]

Aug 25, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Colombo Dockyard has won a deal from a Singapore-based owner to build four 78-metre Multipurpose Platform Supply Vessels (MPSVs) each with a 3,600 tonne deadweight capacity. “The latest additions to the Colombo Dockyard’s shipbuilding order book will take the shipyard through the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 with […]

Aug 24, 2011 (LBO) – An international conference on ports opened in Sri Lanka Wednesday with the head of its port authority saying ports need to urgently need to expand capacity to cope with increasing trade flows. “Global trade is bouncing back (from recession) and there’s a continuous need to enhance port capacity,” Priyath Wickrama, […]

Aug 16, 2011 (LBO) – China Development Banking Corporation will loan 350 million US dollars for a 500 million US dollar container terminal in Colombo to be built by a Sino-Lanka joint venture, state-run Sri Lanka Ports Authority said. The first 600 metres of quay will be completed by December 2013. The terminal will eventually […]

Aug 15, 2011 (LBO) – A 35-year build operate transfer deal has been signed between state-run Sri Lanka Ports Authority and Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT), a Sino-Lanka joint venture, the firm’s major shareholder said. China Merchants International, a Hong Kong listed Chinese state-run firm which has a 55 stake in the terminal company said […]

Aug 11, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s brand new automobile market is dominated by India’s Maruti and Toyota is leading the re-conditioned or imported used car segment, an analysis by J B Securities, a stock brokering firm, shows. Maruti/Suzuki sold 1,373 cars in July 2011, and on average sold more than 1,100 units each month […]

Aug 10, 2011 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Diesel and Motor Engineering Company, an auto importer and distributor said net profits in the June 2011 quarter rose 321 percent to 636 million rupees with revenues growing 112 percent to 7.2 billion rupees. Sri Lanka’s vehicle imports are seeing a boom after taxes were cut on cars […]

Aug 05, 2011 (LBO) – A service station to repair and maintain hybrid cars in Sri Lanka, whose use has risen sharply after an import tax cut, has been set up in the capital Colombo. About 2,000 hybrid electric vehicles, which combine an internal combustion engine with electric motors to drive them, are already on […]

Aug 04, 2011 (LBO) – Profits at Sri Lanka’s Expolanka group, whose key business is in logistics, rose 15 percent to 273 million rupees in the June 2011 quarter from a year earlier, helped by lower interest and taxes, interim accounts showed. Finance costs fell 40 percent to 30 million rupees. The firm raised money […]

Aug 04, 2011 (LBO) – The Sri Lankan government has approved the award of contracts for manufacturing plants in a new port in the south where a remaining rock obstacle will be blasted soon to enable big ships to enter. “Port development takes a good 5-10 years to develop. Today we are competing with other […]

Aug 04, 2011 (LBO) – Metallurgical Corporation of China, a Chinese state-run building and engineering firm is to design and build a section of a highway around the capital Colombo that will connect three other expressways now under construction. The Colombo-Katunayake Expressway is to be completed by end of 2012 and the first two phases […]