Govt. develops land inventory for PP development partnerships
A land inventory is being developed by the Ministry of Industries in a bid to release vacant slots belonging to the ministry, to potential public-private partnership investments, top officials said.
“These lands will be released to key areas such as tourism, automobile component development, agriculture etc. After the end of the inventory, the Ministry of Industries will call for expressions of interest to potential investors on these lands,” an official told The Sunday Times Business. He noted that there is no proper database accessible for the available land in the country.
Sri Lanka has two formal land tenure classifications: state control and private ownership. A sizeable portion of the land, including forest, waste, and unoccupied land, is under state control. State land is managed at national, provincial, district, and divisional levels by government officials.
The ministry is in touch with all District Secretariats to obtain the details of available lands for industrial land and vacant lots, according to the official. He said so far, only the Western Province land details have been given to the ministry. “We have seen a lot of interest in Western Province industrial lands by investors,” he observed. He said the ministry has identified 350 acres of land in Kalutara in the Western province to set up an industrial zone, and the land survey is being carried out currently.
He said that since 2015, some 152 proposals for investments had been received by the ministry for three blocks of land in Middeniya in the Hambantota District.
The ministry is also gearing up to call for expressions of interest for a caustic soda plant in a 30-acre plot of land belonging to Paranthan Chemicals. In the rest of the land, which is 190 acres, a Board of Investment industrial zone will be set up. This will be done after getting Treasury approval, a second official said.
He added that proposals are being made as to what to do with available lands belonging to the state-owned enterprises by the Ministry and related institutions.
Sri Lanka ranks as one of the lowest in terms of allocating land for industrial development. “We are at 0.1 per cent currently. We aim to bring it to at least 1 per cent by next year. This is why the government is now considering releasing state-owned lands too and underlining ritualised lands through the ministry to potential thrust areas for investment,” a third official said.
He said local authorities such as the Board of Investment and the Industrial Development Board manage less than 5,000 acres of industrial zones, which as a percentage of the total land extent in Sri Lanka was only about 0.04 per cent.
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