The presence of LTL Holdings, an 100% locally owned company is a big issue for all the foreign companies collectively, said Ravindra Pitagalage, Chief Financial Officer, LTL Holdings at the 35 year celebrations in Colombo on Wednesday.
In the past there were severe competition from European companies but now the entire picture has changed with companies from India and China entering the fray.
“The issue is these competitors are typically low priced and low quality and LTL has to compete with them with a high quality service or a product,” he said.
“There I would say they find us a big problem,” he said. “Competition is all right. But we have seen people sponsoring politicians against us, writing to newspapers, websites and even ADB to blacklist us.”
With regards to the Kerawalapitiya tender he said they were the lowest by a huge margin there. “The second lowest is a Chinese company the gap between us and them is about one Rupee per unit of electricity. The plant is supposed to deliver about two billion units every year. That means an Rs two billion difference every year to the country.
Pitigalage said the tender has been in the limbo for over one year on grounds that their project cost has been worked out with the assumption on exemption on VAT and NBT. Had the tender being offered to LTL half of the work of the project would have been done by now, he said.
What will happen ultimately is that this will probably get cancelled he said.
LTL by now has over 1,500 megawatt locally and overseas. During the past decade the foreign exchange earned through the power plants built overseas by LTL has exceeded Rs 24 billion and the total savings the government was able to make amounts to Rs 200 billion.
In addition the company also brings in more foreign exchange though the manufacture and sale of transformers which are exported to 24 countries.
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