{"id":81835,"date":"2018-10-09T14:20:25","date_gmt":"2018-10-09T21:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=81835"},"modified":"2018-10-09T14:23:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T21:23:49","slug":"sri-lanka-to-sell-hotel-stakes-possibly-within-six-months-finance-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2018\/10\/09\/sri-lanka-to-sell-hotel-stakes-possibly-within-six-months-finance-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka to sell hotel stakes, possibly within six months: finance minister"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tom Wilson\u00a0Courtesy reuters.com<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
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LONDON (Reuters) – Sri Lanka plans to put two state-owned hotel companies up for sale within the next six months in a sale that could raise $500 million for the island nation as it seeks to bolster its finances, the finance minister said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka faces repayments on expensive infrastructure foreign loans starting this year and already has a hefty debt burden, while its rupee currency has plumbed record lows.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going through the legal hoops of preparing (the sales),\u201d State Minister of Finance Eran Wickramaratne said in an interview. It will maybe take six months to get over that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government began a search for investors in January for the Grand Hyatt Colombo and for a 51 percent stake in a five-star hotel in the capital Colombo that Hilton International runs under a management contract.<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka would also reopen bidding for national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines, probably in a few months, Wickramatne said.<\/p>\n

Talks with private equity firm TPG Capital, the sole bidder in a previous push to sell the carrier, collapsed last year during due diligence.<\/p>\n

We are going through an internal restructuring again, and we may have to make a different offering in a different structure,\u201d Wickramatne said. I\u2019m expecting in the next few months that it will be open for people to express interest\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since 2015, the government of the $87 billion economy has introduced fiscal and monetary policy measures including tax reforms and a flexible currency exchange rate.<\/p>\n

But Sri Lanka has struggled to overhaul major state-owned enterprises including its airline due to a lack of funds and protests by trade unions.<\/p>\n

The International Monetary Fund urged the country in June to strengthen governance and transparency at state firms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Wilson\u00a0Courtesy reuters.com LONDON (Reuters) – Sri Lanka plans to put two state-owned hotel companies up for sale within the next six months in a sale that could raise $500 million for the island nation as it seeks to bolster its finances, the finance minister said on Tuesday. Sri Lanka faces repayments on expensive infrastructure […]<\/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-81835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81835","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=81835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}