Sri Lanka In Talks With India, Japan to Build Container Terminal at Colombo Port

Sri Lanka is in advanced talks with India and Japan to construct a container terminal at the port in Colombo, next to a Chinese terminal built as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, government officials said.The involvement of India and Japan is the latest sign that Sri Lanka wants to neutralise the growing influence of China, which has poured money into the island nation under its mammoth Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure plan, to the alarm of other Asian powers. A source close to the Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka said a framework for the terminal project will be “signed soon”, while another source said the project would cost about $500 million and India and Japan will nominate companies that will handle the containers from their respective countries. “The deal is being negotiated among Sri Lanka, India and Japan,” Sudarshana Gunawardana, an official in Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office told Reuters. The Sri Lankan government will have a 51 percent stake in the terminal, he said. Chinese firms have a mandate to operate Colombo International Container Terminals (CICT) and develop another terminal on a 269-hectare plot of reclaimed land there. Read More…