ECONOMYNEXT- Sri Lanka is in talks with Canada-based entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka origin to build a 500 million dollar industrial park in Kankesanthurai in the Jaffna peninsula, State Minister for Investment Promotion Dilum Amunugama said.
The industrial park will be built on 700 acres by a defunct state-run cement factory.
The investors will invest 500 million dollars to build infrastructure in the land given by the Board of Investment under a private public partnership model.
The Canadian entrepreneurs will build roads and other infrastructure and will attract investors into the zone to recover their costs.
The zone operators have the choice of also constructing buildings and offering plug-and-play factories.
“It is entirely up to them,” Minister Amunugama said. “They can build factories or offer bare land.”
The defunct cement factory only has limestone in about 100 acres which will not be sufficient to sustain a cement factory for a long time, he said.
There was at one time about 500 acres of limestone but now settlements have come up and it was not practical to move people out of the area.
However, if an investor was willing to revive the factory with a smaller extent of limestone, the choice was left to them, Minister Amunugama said.
The industrial park could also build links with the KKS harbour, he said. (Colombo/May10/2024)