SLPA not to buy previous TMS
Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) chairman Dileepa Wijesundare pointed out that the previous administration planned to invest US$29m on what would have been an inferior Terminal Management System resulting in a waste of nearly US$15.5m.
The global LNG industry is in the midst of an unprecedented growth phase with seaborne movements set to double during the current decade and reach 200-220m tonnes per annum (mta) by 2010. Increasing energy consumption, environmental concerns and the need to diversify from an over-reliance on oil are driving the growing demand for clean-burning natural gas.
He has cancelled this explaining that the original purchase would have been made using a soft loan even though the SLPA has sufficient funds to buy the system outright. The port’s leading container handler, the P&O Ports-owned South Asia Gateway Terminals (SAGT), had needed to spend only US$6.7m on a similar installation, he points out. “The selected supplier apparently had the worst demonstration and they did not even have a fully developed system, ” notes Wijesundare. Under the new SLPA policy, loans will not be available to buy equipment due to last less than 10 years.
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