The Galle harbour was cold shouldered for many centuries and plans are now underway to develop it and convert it to a major revenue generator for Sri Lanka, Minister of Plantations Dr. Ramesh Pathirana said.
He said that plans are underway to convert Galle Harbour to a Tourist harbour anticipating future development of tourism and a Yacht Marina will be built with foreign collaboration for which ROP will be called. “We have already allocated the Police barracks area for this development.”
These plans were spelt out 15 years ago but they never happened and this time these proposals will take off and would be a reality. He said that the Southern highway brought tremendous economic benefits to Galle and the proposed harbor development will be the key to ignite the true economic potential of Galle. Recalling history he said that centuries ago Galle was the financial capital with Galle Harbour being the center point of economic activity of then Ceylon. “However British changed this and built the Colombo harbour doing a great injustice to the South.”
He also said that his father Richard Pathirana who was the Minister of Education had a ‘swap’ agreement with former Minister of Shipping, Ports and Rehabilitation, the late M. H. M. Ashraff for my father to build the Eastern University in the Eastern Province and in return Minister Ashraff to build Galle harbour to international standards. “My father kept his promise but the latter did not happen.”
State Minister of Money & Capital Market and State Enterprise Reform, Ajith Nivard Cabraal making the key note address said that the government and the Central Bank took several meaningful steps such as offering moratoria and bringing down the interest rates to lessen the pressure of the C-19 pandemic to enterprises offering host of concessions and these steps have helped the economy going. “Even during the war despite many requests we never kept Sri Lanka on a war footing which helped to achieve around 6% economic growth.”
“During that time when President Mahinda Rajapaksa was the President six finance companies were in near collapse but we bailed them out. The central bank where I as the Governor had a restructuring ‘plan’ not allowing them to fall. We had a finance company consolidating process which saw 58 finance companies merging to 20, but this process was completely done away with by the previous government,” he said.
