He made these remarks yesterday tabling the progress report of the Ministry of Ports and Shipping in Parliament.
According to him, there is a total debt of Rs.142, 961 million (USD 1347 million) on Hambantota Port. Except the RS.2, 574 obtained from the Bank of Ceylon, all other loans have been provided by the EXIM bank of China. All these loans have been obtained on higher interest rates.
“Our main objective is to assign Hambantota Port on lease to a suitable investor who could initiate operations. As a result of the tour made by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in China we received a bid. We had to work hard to achieve this bid. We didn’t get it in an easy way. Only two companies agreed to invest on Hambantota port. Both of them were Chinese companies. We received a bid of USD 750 million from one company and bid of USD 1080 million from the other company. Now we are discussing to sign an agreement with the company which has proposed the higher bid without making any harm to the country”, minister added.
