{"id":41562,"date":"2015-02-15T21:33:44","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T03:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=41562"},"modified":"2015-02-15T14:23:05","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T21:23:05","slug":"port-city-project-steams-ahead-despite-protests-by-prime-minister-ranil-wickremasinghe-jvp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/02\/15\/port-city-project-steams-ahead-despite-protests-by-prime-minister-ranil-wickremasinghe-jvp\/","title":{"rendered":"Port City project steams ahead despite protests by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe & JVP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahapalanaya news<\/span><\/h2>\n

Despite protests from political parties and environmental organisations, construction work of the Colombo Port City project continues.<\/p>\n

Legal experts said that though the government wanted to scrap the project as political parties in the ruling alliance had pledged during the election campaign, scrapping an agreement of this type involving governments cannot be done unilaterally.<\/p>\n

Since the main parties involved in this project are the Sri Lankan and Chinese governments and a construction company from China, in addition to commercial arbitration, there are diplomatic concerns.<\/p>\n

Following the regime change on January 9, the special envoy of the Chinese President and a high level Chinese delegation visited Sri Lanka and we can understand the pressure from China to protect its massive investments in the country, most of them highly controversial.<\/p>\n

When a country invites foreign investors \u00a0not only for an infrastructure project but also for a mega project like port city project the host \u00a0country should offer financial guarantees to help investors protect against\u00a0political and non-commercial risks\u00a0in\u00a0developing countries<\/span>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Normally there should be an arbitration clause in huge projects such as this so that disputes could be settled through international arbitration.<\/p>\n

Should a project be terminated due to the project company\u2019s default, the treasury should normally\u00a0cover 85% of the principal loan amount. In the event of termination of the agreement due to \u00a0reasons other than the project company\u2019s default, then the debt assumption undertaking will cover 100% of the principal loan amount, along with all financing costs.<\/p>\n

In the oil hedging dispute, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation had to go for international arbitration because the agreement had an arbitration clause. If there is no arbitration clause the dispute could be settled in normal courts – High Courts or Commercial Courts under the law of the country, he said.<\/p>\n

However Prime Minister Ranil wicremasinghe and also the Propaganda secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) Vijitha Herath said that government must revise this shady deal which will cause huge economic and environment issues unilaterally without knowing financial implication of such action.<\/p>\n

Herath said that the Chinese delegation met JVP leaders and discussed the matter and the party clearly stated its stance on the project. If the project creates serious environmental and economic issues and threatens the sovereignty of the country it should be scraped or revised.<\/p>\n

This agreement has been signed by former President Mahinda Rajapaksa without even informing the Cabinet. Therefore, the validity of this agreement can be legally challenged,” both critiques said.<\/p>\n

The main legal point is that Sri Lanka doesn’t have regulations or an Act of Parliament for projects related to reclamation of the sea. In countries such as India they have laws to safeguard the environment and other concerns in the reclamation of the sea. There are huge environmental concerns and we have information that the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) report too has not been done properly. According to estimates, the project needs 120 million cubic metres of rock and massive amounts of sea sand,” Herath said.<\/p>\n

Environment issues related to obtaining material and transporting them, coastal and land erosion and impact on marine biodiversity are not known because the EIA report is not available for the public to peruse. According to the agreement, one third of the 575 acres of land area reclaimed will be owned by China. This is a threat to the sovereignty of the country, he said.<\/p>\n

Herath said that the government should seriously think whether this massive project estimated to cost $ 15 billion would produce worthwhile benefits.<\/p>\n

Is this the first priority in the economic development of the country? he queried.<\/p>\n

The project was not transparent from the beginning and a full investigation is needed, Herath said.<\/p>\n

But JVP and the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe \u00a0should educate themselves on how these mega projects contracts are formulated and\u00a0 articulated to provide \u00a0financial guarantees to protect investors from\u00a0political and non-commercial risks\u00a0in\u00a0developing countries.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime The media of the 13th Friday had two very different statements on the fate of the \u2018Port City\u2019 project. Acting Cabinet Spokesman and Minister Lakshman Kiriella is reported to have said: “The Port City Project has been automatically stopped as there were so many shortcomings in the EIA report. We must go through it and rectify those shortcomings before re-start the project,”<\/p>\n

But an interview to the Hindustan Times 13th Friday, given by a Chinese official by name of Mr. Zhang seems to differ. He states, “There were some criticisms and doubts (about the project). This project is aligned with development goals of Sri Lanka. We have very good relations with President Maithripala Sirisena,” On concerns about damaging the environment, he said: “We focus a lot on environmental protection. For marine projects, we have very strict standards about purity of water body. We have 24 sentinel stations. If there is any influence on water quality, we will change implementation plans”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yahapalanaya news Despite protests from political parties and environmental organisations, construction work of the Colombo Port City project continues. Legal experts said that though the government wanted to scrap the project as political parties in the ruling alliance had pledged during the election campaign, scrapping an agreement of this type involving governments cannot be done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}