P K Balachandran By

COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan cabinet on Wednesday “temporarily and immediately” suspended the ongoing US$ 15 billion Chinese-funded Colombo Port City Project (CPCP) as it has been implemented “without relevant approvals from institutions concerned.”

Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne told newspersons here on Thursday, that the China Communication Construction Company (CCCP), which is carrying out the project, has been “adviced to present within two weeks the approvals that had been obtained from the relevant institutions for implementing the project.”

Since the proposal to “temporarily and immediately” suspend work on the project had been presented by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe himself, an end has come to the dilly dallying that has marked government’s policy towards the high profile project which had been inaugurated by none other than Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2014.

Earlier, the project was asked to be put on hold on the plea that environmental clearance had not been obtained for the second phase of the project, namely, the envisaged developments on land.

Some ministers had also raised issues regarding the reclamation of 233 hectares of land from the sea and the outright sale of 20 hectares of the reclaimed land to the Chinese builder, in violation of Lankan law.

But, no directions were implemented because the matter involved the Chinese government given the fact that the construction company is a Chinese government-owned enterprise.

Economist Sam Samarasinghe writing in www.groundviews.org wondered if the project will be worth the expenditure. In the latest Lankan budget presented on January 29, US$ 4 billion had been allocated for capital expenditure. This is only one-fourth of the investment in the Colombo Port City Project. In 2013, Lanka’s total investment, private and public sectors combined, was only $19.6 billion. The CPCP alone is expected to cost about 75% of that amount, Samarasinghe pointed out.

“These numbers show the magnitude of the investment proposed to reclaim a few hundred acres of land from the sea,” he said.