Latest
VIDEO: President declares open Colombo South Terminal
Aug 05, 201309:33 AM
President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared open the Colombo South Terminal of the Colombo Port a short while ago.
The massive terminal in Colombo is located mid-way on the lucrative east-west sea route and has facilities on a par with Singapore and Dubai.
The Colombo International Container Terminal (CICT), which is 85 per cent owned by the state-run China Merchant Holdings International, is designed to handle mega ships -- a first for Sri Lanka which is aiming to become the region’s shipping hub.
The involvement of such a large Chinese company appears to conform to a pattern by Beijing after it sealed a deal in January to acquire the Pakistani port of Gwadar at a time when it is also building a $14 million “dry port” in the Nepalese city of Larcha, near Tibet.
Chinese loans and expertise were also instrumental in the construction of a new $450 million deep-sea port at the southern Sri Lankan city of Hambantota which opened in June 2012.
