Sri Lanka to be transformed to a smart country, says Megapolis Minister
Sri Lanka is to be transformed to a smart country with Colombo remaining as the epicentre for economic activities under the newly-introduced megapolis concept spanning from Negombo to Beruwela; Megapolis and Western Region Development Minister Champika Rnawaka revealed.
The entire Western Province will be a megapolis area by 2030, which ensures equal opportunities for every citizen under this project, he told a gathering at the launch of the South Asian Regional Flagship Report in Sri Lanka at Colombo Hilton on Tuesday. The plan is to transform Colombo into a main business hub, he said adding that the region already has well developed infrastructure, which can be easily scaled up to international standards.
The urbanisation and housing for an estimated two million people will be the aim of the megapolis initiative, as opposed to the approximately one million now, which will conform to all cultural, social and geographical norms, he disclosed.
He emphasised the need to protect the environment, water resources and other needs for the benefit of the society.
Urban Development and Sustainable Development Planning Minister Rauf Hakeem stressed the need of providing alternative housing for over 50,000 urban poor families living in slums and shanties in underdeveloped settlements.
He noted that Sri Lanka needs more investment to effectively manage urban growth and most of the country’s urban areas are experiencing the congestion, limited services and poor infrastructure facilities.
The new government now strives to create an enabling environment for the investor entrepreneurs, architects, engineers and to create a vibrant environment for all people who will be living in smart cities, he said.
The rapid urbanisation creates challenges of ensuring the development is efficiently organised and its rewards equally distributed, he revealed.
“According to a recent diagnostic, a large share of Sri Lanka’s national population that is vulnerable to poverty lives in close proximity to the belt of urbanisation that links Kandy, Colombo, and Galle. Large numbers of vulnerable are also found in and around the major urban centres in the North and East of the country,” said Francoise Clottes, World Bank Country Director for Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
“Sri Lanka has been experiencing a dynamic spatial transformation process driven by the Kandy-Colombo-Galle urbanisation belt as well as localised single-city agglomerations in the eastern and northern parts of the country, mainly around Trincomalee, Batticaloa-Akkaraipattu, and Jaffna,” she added.
Sri Lanka is a country almost close to the boundary of 50 per cent of urbanisation like the rest of world,” said Ede Jorge Ijjasz-Vasquez, Senior Director of the World Bank.
Official statistics on urbanisation using narrow municipal limits to show urbanisation are very different from what a new World Bank study has found, he pointed out.
While statistics show only 40 per cent of Sri Lankans live in cities and within municipal councils, when urban agglomeration units are considered, about 47 per cent of the people are urbanised, he opined.
“So the country is far more urbanised than what the statistics may be saying. That’s important for is urbanisation policy,” he suggested.
Annette Dixon, Vice President for the South Asia Region of the World Bank, said policymakers in the region face a choice: Continue with the same policies or undertake reforms to tap into the tremendous unrealized potential of South Asia’s cities.“It is essential to move forward,” Ms. Dixon said. “It won’t be easy, but with the right policies and investments, South Asia’s cities can be much more livable and prosperous.”
“In the most extreme case of Sri Lanka, (new data) shows that as much as one-third of its entire population may be living in unrecognised urban settlements,” the World Bank report revealed.
These unrecognised urban settlements are likely to include former town councils that, before Sri Lanka’s 1987 tightening of its definition, were officially classified as urban alongside the country’s municipal and urban councils.
South Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, can benefit from urbanisation as a major opportunity to transform their economies and join the ranks of richer nations, according to the World Bank report.
According to the report’s findings, Sri Lanka has performed well relative to other countries in the region. Its urbanisation has been less “messy” insofar that only a relatively small proportion of t7e urban population lives in slums and it has largely eradicated extreme urban poverty.
Between 1999 and 2010, Sri Lanka was the country in the region with the fastest expansion of urban area relative to urban population. Sri Lanka cut urban poverty particularly quickly, from7.9 per cent in 2002 to about 2 per cent in 2013, the report said.