JAFFNA - Jaffna, citadel of Sri Lanka’s former war ravaged region, will see its first ever share issue in the next few months when shares in a new hotel project are offered to the public, officials said here on Monday.
Laying the foundation stone for the construction of Hotel Nallur, a 80-room property launched by state-owned Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka (MBSL), Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal told an audience of officials mostly from MBSL, the Central Bank and a few from Jaffna that he hoped MBSL will give preference in the IPO (shares to the public) to residents of Jaffna.
BSL Chairman Janaka Ratnayake said they are working out details of the IPO while construction of the hotel would be completed in 8-10 months. He said the plan to develop a hotel came after an issue of a disputed property in Jaffna owned by The Finance Co (TFC), a Ceylinco company which is now managed by MBSL.
“We were trying to dispose of this property when we were told that this is an ideal location for a hotel. And with our new strategy to diversify, it became an ideal opportunity to build a hotel,” he said, adding that there is a shortage of rooms in Jaffna where hundreds of people are visiting from the south. Jaffna, he said, now has about 150 rooms at 10-15 small hotels/guesthouses.
Mr Cabraal said this project is the ideal impetus towards private sector investment in the region. Jobs are being created in the hotel and other services to the hotel and hopefully this would spur others to invest in Jaffna.
He told the Business Times that the government was also planning to provide incentives to developers of apartment complexes here as another initiative to fast-track development in the region
Some nearby residents were however disappointed that the speeches and proceedings were only in English.
“We welcome development but we like to be a big part of it. It would have been nice to have at least a few speeches like that of Mr Cabraal translated to Tamil because he was speaking on important government policy,” a taxi driver down Nallur road, where the hotel project is coming up, who had been listening from a distance, said. |
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