Ranil Wickremesinghe, the president of Sri Lanka, was in town, and Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani met with him to discuss a number of projects on the island.
The discussions included the development of the Colombo Port West Container Terminal (WCT), the industrialist said Wickremesinghe is on a two-day visit to India.
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones Ltd (APSEZ), a key subsidiary of the diversified Adani Group, in March 2021 received a Letter of Intent (LOI) from Sri Lankan authorities for the development and operations of West Container Terminal (WCT) in Colombo.
APSEZ will partner with John Keells Holdings PLC, Sri Lanka’s largest diversified conglomerate, and with the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) as a part of the consortium awarded this mandate.
The WCT will be developed on a Build, Operate and Transfer basis for a period of 35 years as a public-private partnership.
The project is expected to boost WCT’s container handling capacity and further consolidate Sri Lanka’s locational advantage as one of the world’s top strategic nodes along the busiest global transhipment route.
The Colombo Port is already the most preferred regional hub for transhipment of Indian containers and mainline ship operators with 45 per cent of Colombo’s transhipment volumes either originating from or destined to an Adani port terminal in India.
The network impact of this partnership is significant and expected to be mutually benefitted from the string of 7 container terminals across its 12 ports that Adani operates along the Indian coastline handling an annual volume of over 6 million TEUs.
Earlier on Thursday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar called on the Sri Lankan President .Wickremesinghe arrived in New Delhi on yesterday and was welcomed by Union Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs, V Muraleedharan.
Ministry of External Affairs official spokesperson Arindam Bagchi noted that Wickremesinghe’s visit will further boost the multi-prolonged partnership between India and Sri Lanka. Notably, it is Sri Lankan President’s first visit to India since assuming office.
President Wickremesinghe will meet with his Indian counterpart Droupadi Murmu during his visit and speak with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Indian dignitaries about a number of topics of interest to both countries, according to a press release from the Ministry of External Affairs.