Financial Times

Road congestion may hurt Colombo as a commercial capital
By Nimesha Herath
The number of people coming to Colombo will reduce in the future due to increasing road congestion with current studies already showing a drop of six percent during 1995 to 2005 in the numbers coming into the capital, a transportation specialist said.

Amal S.Kumarage, Professor/ Head, Transportation Engineering Division, University of Moratuwa, said while the growth of vehicle traffic has increased by 47 percent over the decade (1995-2005) and the growth of demand for road space rising by 32 percent, passenger traffic is falling.

“The number of people coming to the city will reduce. Thus a number of business establishments will migrate to suburbs or become uncompetitive,” Kumarage said. Speaking at a seminar last week on “Land Transport Infrastructure for Economic Development,” organised by the Chamber of Construction Industry (CCI), he said Colombo will become “disfunctional gradually as an effective commercial capital with no planned alternate to take its place.”

At the meeting there were calls made for more private sector investment in Sri Lanka’s infrastructure, particularly roads, acknowledging that the government alone cannot handle development in this sector.

CCI President Surath Wickramasinghe said Sri Lanka needs to concentrate on advanced infrastructure spread across the nation if the economic growth of 8-10 percent according to the Mahanda Chinthana is to be achieved. He said optimum utilization of resources in domestic construction will benefit in an economic advantage to the industry as well as the country.

S. Amarasekera, Secretary, Ministry of Highways emphasized that the Sri Lanka government has taken key initiatives to develop infrastructure under projects such as Hambantota Port, Colombo South Harbour, Southern International Airport, Greater Dambulla Township, 320 full fledged schools in each Divisional Secretariats and 17 new large hospitals countrywide.
He said the road network in Sri Lanka consists of roads built more than 50 years ago.

Lack of maintenance, improvements and rehabilitation of roads compared to the rapid growth in demand for transport, difficulty in widening and improving roads due to encroachments, no separate lanes for different type of vehicles, traffic levels exceeding the design capacity of roads and no proper attention directed towards future needs of increasing vehicles have contributed to a worsening situation, he said.The construction industry here faces issues like lack of skilled contractors, lack of financial capability, lack of resources and lack of contract management and procurement know-how. The secretary said joint ventures among large foreign companies and local companies should be encouraged in order to overcome these obstacles.

Recent budget proposals provide more incentives to the local construction industry through the creation of a guaranteed fund of upto Rs.200 million to facilitate importation of modern machinery and equipment. According to M.B.S. Fernando, Chairman, Road Development Authority, new projects like the outer circular highway, Base Line phase 3 and alternative Colombo- Kandy highway are to be implemented in near future.

Other officials said while more private sector investment is required, the environment is not conducive for them to come in as investors. “Though the policy is good, the private sector still faces difficulty in getting into the infrastructure arena. There is a sense of jealousy raised over the private sector’s profit (and thus they are not provided contracts). We need to overcome this since borrowing from the local market might be cheaper then donor country borrowings,” one official said.

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