The delay in the Colombo Port City Project was not due to a fault in the Chinese company, Sri Lanka's Ambassador to China Dr. Karunasena Kodithuwakku said.
In an interview with China Daily on Friday, he said that a greater environmental impact assessment to allay public concern was needed, which was "not the fault of the Chinese company".
Sri Lanka had suspended the project in January 2015, soon after Maithripala Sirisena was elected President. However, the project has been given the green light, the Sri Lankan Ambassador to China Dr. Karunasena Kodithuwakku confirmed.
The $1.4 billion urban complex project will cover 233 hectares adjoining the Port of Colombo. The deal was signed between the Sri Lankan government and the China Communications Construction Company in November 2013.
"We feel Colombo is ideal for a South Asian financial hub," Kodituwakku said in an interview with China Daily.
The location of the project will help connect businesses from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Singapore and the Middle East, he said.
The Colombo Port City is one of China's key projects along the 21st Maritime Silk Road. "The most important South Asian port" under the initiative "will be a port in Colombo or another port in Sri Lanka", said the ambassador.
Colombo Port City will become "a high-end urban complex in South Asia concentrating industries, including finance, tourism, logistics and information technology", and the whole project will create more than 80,000 jobs, according to the Chinese Embassy to Sri Lanka.
The construction project's "incremental environmental impacts" were assessed as "minimal/negligible at the reclamation site and the coastal zone to the North and South of the site," said an environmental impact report released in December by the Sri Lankan Coast Conservation and Coastal Resource Management Department.
"The project will create employment. It will create tax income and indirect opportunities for other services. ... Everybody will benefit," the ambassador said.
(With inputs from China Daily)
