A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, June 19, 2017
Investment fraud in 62,500 Uva-Wellassa land handover
An
investment fraud is alleged in a project under which the government is
making fresh attempts to hand over 62,500 acres of forest reserve and
Mahaweli Authority-owned land in Uva-Wellassa for sugarcane cultivation
that had earlier been rejected as a failed and non-viable project.
During the previous Rajapaksa regime, the plan was made to give the land
to a US multinational company through its Singaporean affiliate, but
the secretary to the subject ministry had disproved of it. Also, people
of Uva-Wellassa, environmentalists and civil society organizations
opposed the project.
However, reliable government sources say the New York based CDVCA will
now be given the land through Gazelle Ventures of Singapore, as
confirmed by cabinet paper MDE/AD/03/CAB)PA/2017. Their local agent is
Islandwide Marketing Services Pvt. Ltd. (IMS), with the shares of the
project to be distributed as 88 per cent for Gazelle Ventures, 10 pc for
IMS and one pc each for Mahaweli Authority and the farmers.
Although claimed to be a major project, Gazelle Ventures is to make a
mere 150 million dollar investment on the project. That money will not
be brought into the country as foreign exchange, but will be obtained
from local banks. The project envisages to produce just 14 pc, or 80,000
metric tons, of the local sugar requirement, and environmentalists warn
allotting this vast virgin land for sugarcane cultivation will
aggravate the human-elephant conflict and create other serious problems
too.
IMS is the same company that mediated unsuccessfully in 2007 to handover
land to Britain’s Booker Tate for sugarcane cultivation.The
questionable investment for the project is same as the one made during
the Rajapaksa regime for the Embilipitiya paper company, where the
facility was mortgaged to a local bank to obtain a loan. That project
too, did not materialize and only ruins of the factory remain.
Concerned groups call on the government to reconsider the project that
that will bring it discredit and pose a threat to national assets.
Sanjaya Liyanage