{"id":79924,"date":"2018-08-05T22:50:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T04:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=79924"},"modified":"2018-08-05T14:58:40","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T21:58:40","slug":"sri-lanka-reworking-mou-to-hand-over-worlds-emptiest-airport-to-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/08\/05\/sri-lanka-reworking-mou-to-hand-over-worlds-emptiest-airport-to-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka reworking MoU to hand over world’s emptiest airport to India"},"content":{"rendered":"

Press Trust of India<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Sri Lanka govt had announced that it will go ahead with the deal with India to jointly operate the $210 million Mattala Rajapaksha International Airport at Hambantota<\/h2>\n

The Sri Lankan government is reworking on the draft of a memorandum of understanding to hand over the management of\u00a0Mattala Rajapaksha International Airport\u00a0<\/a>at\u00a0Hambantota\u00a0<\/a>to Indian airport operator, according to a media report on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Dubbed as the “world’s emptiest airport” due to lack of flights, the\u00a0MRIA\u00a0<\/a>was build with high interest commercial loans from China by the Mahinda Rajapaksha government. It was officially opened in March 2013 and the only international flight operating from there was halted in May.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Sri Lanka\u00a0<\/a>government had announced that it will go ahead with the deal with India to jointly operate the $210 million\u00a0Mattala Rajapaksha International Airport\u00a0<\/a>(MRIA) at Hambantota, about 241km south-east of Colombo, through a joint venture with the\u00a0Airports Authority of India\u00a0<\/a>(AAI).<\/p>\n

\"Mattala<\/p>\n

Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport. Photo: Wikipedia<\/div>\n

Last month, the government had last month asked the Indian airport operator to submit its business plan for operating the loss-making airport.<\/p>\n

A draft MoU on handing over of the\u00a0MRIA\u00a0<\/a>to the\u00a0Airports Authority of India\u00a0<\/a>(AAI) was recently presented before the Sri Lankan Cabinet and is now being reworked at the Indian government’s request, the Sunday Times reported.<\/p>\n

The talks for management control of the\u00a0MRIA\u00a0<\/a>are continuing between India and Sri Lanka, at no point during the negotiations with India was the proposal withdrawn or denied despite what the media reported, it said, quoting an unnamed official.<\/p>\n

“The Sri Lankan government’s terms only allow for management control of the commercial activities of the airport while ownership and statutory functions including air traffic control and air traffic rights will be under the control of Sri Lankan authorities,” said another official<\/p>\n

The AAI is to enter a deal with\u00a0Sri Lanka\u00a0<\/a>Civil Aviation Authority to run the MRIA, named after Rajapaksa in his home district. The AAI is to have a 70 per cent stake while Sri Lanka’s CAA will invest 30 per cent, parliament was told.<\/p>\n

The private-public-partnership will allow AAI to enter into a 40-year lease agreement to take up the management control of the airport.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Press Trust of India\u00a0 Sri Lanka govt had announced that it will go ahead with the deal with India to jointly operate the $210 million Mattala Rajapaksha International Airport at Hambantota The Sri Lankan government is reworking on the draft of a memorandum of understanding to hand over the management of\u00a0Mattala Rajapaksha International Airport\u00a0at\u00a0Hambantota\u00a0to Indian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79924","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=79924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}