Dilrook Kannangara

Trinco port is a natural port; it had its place in ancient times along with the Mannar port when the island’s main goods trading partners were to its east and when it traded in grains and it was and still is militarily useful. However, it has no (zero) economic potential. No major shipping lane goes near it as it lies hundreds of nautical miles away from the large shipping lane that traverses the island. It is uneconomical for a ship to make a call at the Trinco port by leaving large shipping lanes. Colombo, Galle and to an extent Hambantota port have commercial utility. For over seventy years no local or foreign investor has invested in Trinco port for this reason. It has a very low current economic use but beyond that it has zero economic potential.

Fortunes for the Trinco port can change if China builds a road connecting it with the Bay of Bengal. However, that requires slitting India’s chicken neck or Siliguri Corridor thus breaking up India which is unlikely to happen anytime soon. India has shut itself out of the new silk road (Belt and Road Initiative). Goods trading with India is more economically handled at the Colombo port facing India’s large ports along its western coast.

No state investments should be wasted on Trinco port as such a project will be a massive white elephant. Fisheries around the area, limited current port operations and military use of the port should continue.

Trinco oil tank farm is also economically useless beyond the very limited current use. The main reason is it is a distant outlier from petroleum transit routes – it costs millions to divert tankers to take fuel there. It also costs too much to take fuel from Trinco to large consumers hundreds of kilometers away. The IOC deal that provided some usefulness to a very few tanks is itself an economic disaster for Sri Lanka. This is a commercially viable business that Sri Lanka’s private and public sector were able to manage profitably. Foreign players are not required here.

Colombo port is the only commercially viable port today but its operations are severely affected due to lack of expansion space. Its surrounding areas are densely populated that seals the fate of the port. Support services for transshipment are located outside the port, at times over 10 to 20 kilometers away linked by roads that are always congested. Large scale storage, repair, value added service operations, back-up and fallback facilities for other ports cannot be provided by Colombo due to severe lack of space. Without radical relocation of people there is no hope for meaningful expansion. Trying to replace Colombo with another port is a waste of time and money as large shipping companies will simply bypass both. For them time and scale translate to money.

Wasting money on dud projects contributed in a big way to bankrupting the nation. No more. If commercially astute investors avoid an investment proposal, it is for good reasons.