Sri Lanka, the tiny Indian Ocean island nation is building the Port City of Colombo (PCC), hoping to make it a financial hub like Dubai and Singapore.
The belief is that the project will transform Sri Lanka’s tourism-and-tea economy into a thriving, multi-services one. And it is an expensive dream, especially so for a country in the grip of unprecedented economic turmoil.
The project is estimated to cost $14 billion, largely funded by potential investors who will buy into the idea of the financial hub and set up shop there. For starters though, China has invested $1.4 billion to help PCC reclaim 269 hectares of land on the Indian Ocean. In exchange, China has got about 116 hectares of the land there on a 99-year lease.
Port City Colombo is a public-private partnership project between the Sri Lankan government and CHEC Port City Colombo Pvt. Ltd, which is a subsidiary of China’s state-run infrastructure firm, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC), a company that is leading President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The move comes even as the economic crisis has pushed well-heeled Sri Lankans to take to some of the upmarket streets to protest against the Rajapaksa brothers — President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa — nearly daily.
