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Lanka to offer Dubai-style offshore banking in Port City
Sri Lanka will offer offshore banking facilities in the proposed Financial and Business District within the Colombo Port City, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said yesterday.
“Legislation will be introduced soon in Parliament to create a new jurisdiction within the 575 acre area to be reclaimed,” he told the Sunday Times. A legal expert is heading a team that is studying the Dubai model and will formulate draft legislation, he said.
The move, if successful, will make the proposed F&B District in Sri Lanka a tax haven. In Dubai, a Financial Service Authority serves as a regulatory agency of a special economic zone. Offshore banking in Dubai is described as the fastest growing in the world. It has its own laws and courts.
Premier Wickremesinghe said that ahead of these laws, to facilitate the exercise, a new Exchange Control Bill would also be introduced. The idea was to relax controls and ensure provisions considered obstacles to foreign investment were removed. He said the F&B District would offer a variety of services including management, investment, corporate banking and arbitration.
Though highly critical of the Colombo Port City Project, both during presidential and parliamentary elections, the Government gave the goahead in January this year. This came after several studies including environmental impact assessments. The US$ 1.4 billion project envisages the reclamation of 575 acres (or 233 hectares) of the seas overlooking the Presidential Secretariat building in Colombo Fort.