BOI to get tough with firms having land leases
View(s):Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment (BOI) will get tough with companies that have leased state land and are ‘sitting on their’ projects, officials said.
“We found that there’re many companies who secured lands on long lease from the BOI and ‘not done anything’ on them. Now we’re planning to revoke them,” BOI Chairman Upul Jayasuriya told the Business Times. He said infact the BOI did just that recently in Seeduwa, a suburb of Negombo. According to him, some lands were given more than 10 years ago and they are idling. “There are others who would want to develop on them. We want to give them a chance,” Mr. Jayasuriya added. He said that the BOI, upon research saw that most such lands that are idling were secured by powerful-connected companies.
Taking a stand against all those irrespective of ‘all personalities’, he noted that earlier there was no transparency in bidding for land, a process the BOI will introduce l soon. “We aim to publish all available land and upload them on the web. Whoever wants to bid for them can go through the web and will be called for an ‘open bidding process’,” he said.