Sri Lanka has announced plans to develop Trincomalee Port as an industrial hub. The island nation will also quickly float tenders for it. Thus, the economically beleaguered nation can put up a few thousand hectares of land on lease to arrange industries in a particular financial zone and promote the related growth of the strategically positioned port.
“We are actually planning to go for an Expression of Interest (EoI) to develop Trincomalee Port as an industrial port. That means we will be asking not only from one party, but whoever the industrialists are who want to come and utilise the port premises. We have large land, some 2,400 hectares, that surrounds the port of Trincomalee,” Prasantha Jayamanna, chairman of Sri Lanka Ports Authority stated. The proposal to develop an industrial hub in Trincomalee is a long-standing plan to monetise land that belongs to the Sri Lanka Port Authority, by getting international and native funding for a particular financial zone, an industrial park, or a power hub. This would additionally open up the port to moving bulk and break bulk cargo as well, such as cement, coal or different industrial raw materials. “We are planning to call for EoIs soon. We had planned to do this in April, but delayed it till the situation [improved], because we expect a lot of local industries to also come and invest in the port,” Jayamanna stated.
