Colombo South Harbour project on track

Colombo: The Colombo South Harbour Development Project, presently under construction, would be positioned as the best transshipment cargo handling hub in the South Asia region, Asian Development Bank (ADB) Country Director Dr Richard Vokes said.

He said ADB has agreed to an alternative plan that would allow for the construction of the breakwater for the new Colombo South Harbour, with US$ 300 million funding from the bank. An earlier arrangement involved an open and transparent awarding of the contract for building the new harbour’s first terminal.

Therefore, details and a final confirmation of the new deal will not be available until early next week.

The Colombo South Harbour will mainly focus on handling transshipment cargo in the subcontinent. At present, the Port of Colombo alone handles 15 per cent of transshipment cargo in the subcontinent.
The Colombo South Harbour will be located west of the present south-west breakwater in an area of about 600 hectares.

The harbour will have four terminals of over 1,200m in length each to accommodate three berths alongside depths of 18m and provision to deepen to 23m to accommodate deeper draft vessels of the future.

The channel width of the harbour is to be 560m and depth of 20m, with harbour basin depth of 18m and a 600m turning circle. The harbour will boast the latest generation of yard planning and container handling equipment and techniques.

The project will raise the capacity of the Colombo Port from the existing around four million TEUs annually to about 12 million. The first terminal is likely to become operational in 2010 and will have a nominal capacity of 2.4 million TEUs.

The project is part of the Colombo Port Expansion Project, the largest project undertaken by the Sri Lanka Ports Authority with a $1200 million investment.

It is a Government built-and-owed harbour facility and will have a private-public partnership in the provision of terminal services.

In addition, the SLPA will be the overall landlord, with an equity stake in each terminal.

The Asian Development Bank has pledged a US$ 35 million loan towards the commencement of the project. The completion is scheduled for 2010.