The delayed Colombo Port City project, a plan to create a South Asian financial hub, hasbeen given the green light, the Sri Lankan ambassador to China has confirmed, the China Daily news agency reported.

The $1.4 billion urban complex project will cover 233 hectaresadjoining the Port of Colombo. The deal was signed between the SriLankan government and the China Communications Construction Coin November 2013.

“We feel Colombo is ideal for a South Asian financial hub,”Ambassador Karunasena Kodituwakku said in an interview.

The location of the project will help connect businesses from India,Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Singapore and theMiddle East, he said.

The Colombo Port City is one of China’s key projects along the 21stMaritime Silk Road. The most important South Asian port” under theinitiative ”will be a port in Colombo or another port in Sri Lanka”, saidthe ambassador.

Colombo Port City will become ”a high-end urban complex in South Asia concentratingindustries, including finance, tourism, logistics and information technology”, and the wholeproject will create more than 80,000 jobs, according to the Chinese Embassy to Sri Lanka.

However, the Sri Lankan government suspended the project in early 2015 after MaithripalaSirisena became president.

A greater environmental impact assessment to allay public concern was needed, which was”not the fault of the Chinese company”, Kodituwakku said.
The construction project’s ”incremental environmental impacts” were assessed as”minimal/negligible at the reclamation site and the coastal zone to the North and South of thesite,” said an environmental impact report released in December by the Sri Lankan CoastConservation and Coastal Resource Management Department.

-Agencies