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No freehold land, but 83,000 jobs,US$13 billion in new financial city: Ministry
View(s):Issuing a statement to mark the signing of the agreement for the CIFC, formerly known as the Colombo Port City (CPC), the Megapolis and Western Development Ministry also said the entire reclaimed area of 269 hectares would be first declared by the President as territory of Sri Lanka under the Lands Ordinance. Thereafter the reclaimed area would be declared as an area coming under the Urban Development Authority (UDA) Act and/or the proposed CIFC Law.
The new tripartite agreement was signed between CHEC Port City Colombo (Pvt) Ltd., which is the Project Company, the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development and the UDA. This agreement formally replaces the previous agreement signed on September 16, 2014 between the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) and the Project Company for the construction of a Port City.
The ministry said the new agreement would seek to create a new international financial city to be governed under a new Act titled Colombo International Financial Centre Law. The bill is to be introduced in Parliament shortly. This Act envisages the creation of an “International Financial Zone” within the land area to be reclaimed by the Project Company. The Financial Zone will create an environment to attract the international financial services industry by attracting reputed international banking and financial services companies to set up offices within the CIFC, the ministry noted.
The Government and the Project Company envisage creating about 83,000 employment opportunities within different sectors, attracting more than US$ 13 billion in Foreign Direct Investments from investors and developers from countries including India, Singapore, Malaysia and China while also increasing the number of tourists visiting Sri Lanka within the next 20-30 years.
All lands to be allocated would be on leases executed by the Government and under no circumstances would the Project Company get any land for a lease period of more than 99 years. Furthermore, when the Project Company attracts investors to its lands, such lands will be leased to such third party investors also on a 99-year lease executed by the Government.
In the new agreement, the ministry has highlighted several other favourable conditions that were obtained through detailed negotiations between the Government and the Project Company. Accordingly, The lands used for public purposes such as roads, parks and pedestrian walkways have been increased by 44% from 63 hectares to 91 hectares. This has been the primary reason for the expansion of the reclaimed area from 233 hectares as contained in the 2014 Agreement to the current 269 hectares.
The 2014 agreement had placed restrictions on the possible developments to be undertaken on marketable lands allocated to the Government for three years after the reclamation. Under the new agreement, this restriction has been relaxed so that the GOSL could without any restriction begin development of exhibition and convention centres, hospital and medical facilities, the ministry said.
The Government had earlier suspended the project for more than a year. According to the Government, the suspension was a result of incomplete environmental study. This has now been rectified via a comprehensive new Supplementary Environmental Impact Assessment (SEIA) study. Moreover, the new Development Permit issued by the Department of Coast Conservation in 2016 contains 70 conditions designed to protect the environment (almost double the number of conditions issued under the 2011 Permit), the ministry stated.