Chief Government Whip and Highways Minister Johnston Fernando yesterday said that Colombo Port City would be a driver of growth and foreign direct investment and concerns over it being a Chinese colony are baseless and totally unfounded.
Speaking to the media after attending a Sinhala and Hindu New Year in Kurunegala the minister said the Port City is going to be another special economic zone. “When the Katunayake free trade zone was being set up under the Greater Colombo Economic Commission in 1978 under the leadership of Upali Wijewardene, the same fears were raised and some expressed concerns.”
“Now we have many special economic zones (SEZ), including export processing zones (EPZs), industrial parks (IPs) and industrial estates. We currently have 12 EPZs and two IPs throughout the country. These areas are considered vital for attracting investment and building industry and the fears raised when the Katunayake EPZ was set up were not raised when other similar zones were set up in Biyagama and Koggala. The Port City too is going to be an SEZ with tax exemptions and more latitude for the investors.”
“Like in the case of Greater Colombo Economic Commission which later became the Board of Investment, for the control of the port city a special commission is proposed. The government has submitted a bill to parliament for that purpose. Taking chunks out of that bill the opposition and misled parties are now expressing fears,” the Minister said.
He said that an SEZ cannot become a colony of another country. The UNCTAD has identified SEZ as a ‘geographically delimited areas within which governments facilitate industrial activity through fiscal and regulatory incentives and infrastructure support’ and such zones are widely used in most developing and many developed economies.
Fernando said that in similar delimited areas, governments facilitate industrial activity through fiscal and regulatory incentives and infrastructure support. There are about 5,383 SEZs across 147 economies worldwide. “None of those countries has lost the territorial integrity of their SEZs have become a threat to their sovereignty. We already have SEZs and India too has them. The fears being mongered are baseless.”
The Minister said that the land reclaimed from the sea near the Galle Face with the objective of making a port city and not for the purpose of becoming an esplanade where people could go fly kites. “The port city is going to be the very same objective that it has been set up. It has been always stated that this would be an SEZ yet there were no concerns for the past years while the land was being reclaimed for the purpose,” the minister said.
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