Sahasya’s collapse exposes costly gaps in state governance
When Sahasya Investment Company was established in October 2020, it was billed as a turning point in the management of Sri Lanka’s expressway network. Designed as a state-owned commercial entity, Sahasya was meant to bring corporate discipline to an infrastructure system weighed down by heavy debt and long-standing inefficiencies.
Instead, five years on, the company has been liquidated having barely operated leaving behind unanswered questions about governance, accountability and public finance.
Sahasya was established at a time when expressway liabilities had climbed to alarming levels, with total debt estimated at over Rs. 860 billion, a senior official of the Finance Ministry disclosed.
He noted that the shifting of operations to a company structure from the Road Development Authority (RDA) was aimed at allowing better financial management, cost recovery and potential private-sector participation. But, from the inception, Sahasya struggled to move beyond the planning stage.
Despite being legally incorporated and funded by the State, the company remained largely inactive for several years.
Expressway operations continued under the RDA, while Sahasya existed as an administrative shell, he added.
The then Cabinet had approved the transfer of expressway management in early 2024, nearly four years after incorporation, and even then, the changeover was scrappy and incomplete.
The financial footprint of Sahasya was another problematic area. The Auditor-General’s Department 2018–2020 audit volume mentioned that that capital contributions (cheques) made by the Treasury had been issued to Sahasya Investment Ltd. But it has stated the “company has not submitted it to banks and that “investments should be made efficiently and effectively”.
This implies public funds were allocated to the company even though operations were yet to begin.
A ministry official, speaking during a parliamentary oversight discussion, acknowledged the problem, stating that “the company did not reach a stage where it could generate revenue or demonstrate value for money for the State”.
This admission underscores the core failure of Sahasya: it consumed public resources without producing measurable returns.
In a recent review of state-owned enterprises, the Auditor General’s Department observed that several government companies had been established “without a clear operational framework or measurable performance indicators”.
It has warned that “such entities risk becoming a fiscal burden rather than a reform tool”. Sahasya’s trajectory appears to fit squarely within that critique.
Institutional duplication further undermined the company’s viability. The RDA already possessed the legal mandate, technical expertise and operational systems to manage expressways.
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