Cabinet moves regulations covering businesses designated strategically important as the long-promised financial city searches for momentum
Sixty-eight businesses operating within Colombo Port City are to be formally brought before Parliament under regulations designating them as secondary businesses of strategic importance.
Cabinet approved submitting the regulations to Parliament following an earlier decision taken on March 30. The designations were subsequently published in an Extraordinary Gazette on April 10.
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The businesses span information technology, consultancy, business process outsourcing, logistics, infrastructure and other commercial activities.
On paper, it sounds encouraging. But Port City is now sufficiently mature for Sri Lanka to begin asking harder questions than how many businesses have registered.
The project was sold as a transformational international financial and commercial centre capable of attracting billions of dollars of foreign investment, creating high-value employment and establishing Colombo as a serious regional business hub.
The relevant measure is therefore not merely the number of entities designated strategically important. It is how much capital they have actually brought into Sri Lanka, how many people they employ, how much economic activity they generate and how much of that activity would not otherwise have occurred.
NewsLine has previously raised questions about transparency surrounding the Port City Commission and its operations.
Those questions become more important, not less, as businesses receive special designations and associated incentives.
Sixty-eight companies sounds impressive.
Now Parliament should ask what the 68 actually bring to the country.
