{"id":61273,"date":"2016-12-09T17:06:12","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T00:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=61273"},"modified":"2016-12-09T17:06:12","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T00:06:12","slug":"how-did-govt-earn-us1-1-bn-from-white-elephant-namal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/12\/09\/how-did-govt-earn-us1-1-bn-from-white-elephant-namal\/","title":{"rendered":"How did govt. earn US$1.1 Bn from &#8216;white elephant&#8217;? Namal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Lahiru Pothmulla\u00a0Courtesy The Daily Mirror<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>UPFA Hambantota District MP Namal Rajapaksa today asked how the Hambantota Port, which was branded as a \u2018white elephant\u2019 by the United National Party (UNP) when in the Opposition, had now become a paying concern good enough to be sold to a private company.<\/p>\n<p>He condemned the Government\u2019s decision to handover some 80 per cent of the Port to China Merchants Port Holdings Company and said the government was to receive US$1.1 billion by doing so. If the port was making a loss, the government should clarify how it was able to estimate its value at US$1.1 billion,\u201d Namal told a news conference. He said it was uncertain as to what would happen to the funds received from the deal.<\/p>\n<p>The government says it sold the port to settle the debts that had swallowed the country. However, as far as we know, it won\u2019t be used to settle the debt but will go into the hands of an individual,\u201d Namal said.<\/p>\n<p>He said an income of Rs.5,000 million was received from the port during the Rajapaksa government but it had dropped to Rs.2,150 million within one year after the present government.\u00a0 ()<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; See more at: http:\/\/www.dailymirror.lk\/article\/How-did-govt-earn-US-Bn-from-white-elephant-Namal-120490.html#sthash.UjUQB2ix.dpuf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lahiru Pothmulla\u00a0Courtesy The Daily Mirror UPFA Hambantota District MP Namal Rajapaksa today asked how the Hambantota Port, which was branded as a \u2018white elephant\u2019 by the United National Party (UNP) when in the Opposition, had now become a paying concern good enough to be sold to a private company. He condemned the Government\u2019s decision to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61273","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=61273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}