President Anura Kumara Dissanayake assured Parliament that Budget 2025 would provide for fundamental steps to achieve hub status for trade, logistics, financial services, and the digital economy.

The President said: “Logistics holds significant potential to serve as a premier driver of economic development in Sri Lanka, leveraging the country’s strategic geographic location. Currently, logistics contributes approximately 2.5 percent of the nation’s GDP, 7 percent contribution to exports and provides direct full-time employment to an estimated 40,000–50,000 individuals.

The completion of the East and West Container Terminal projects will have a significant capacity enhancement of the Port of Colombo. Additionally, the proposed Colombo West Terminal 2 and Colombo North Port is expected to expedite the performance of Sri Lanka’s ports. Therefore, we will call for Expression of Interest for these projects within a month.

The Port of Colombo is currently experiencing severe congestion as container volumes have surged significantly, exposing the need for critical development in infrastructure and systems and procedures.

Therefore, we propose to allocate Rs. 500 million from the 2025 Budget to support the land acquisition process and initial preparatory works of the Kerawalapitiya custom inspection yard and Bloemendhal Logistics Park.

As a long-term measure to ease the container traffic congestion in and around the Colombo Port and increasing foreign earning through value addition, it is proposed to establish an Internal Container Dry Port (ICD) at Veyangoda as a rail-based Integrated Multimodal Cargo and Logistic Centre (IMCLC). We propose to allocate Rs. 500 million to review previous studies, identify an institutional mechanism, land acquisition and initial preparatory works on the ICD at Veyangoda.

We propose to allocate Rs. 500 million to support the initial development of the National Single Window System, Truck Appointment System, E-Cargo Tracking System and Port Community System.

Modernizing infrastructure and incorporating cutting-edge technology is crucial for improving cargo movement. Outdated scanning systems are causing delays in the whole supply chain. Therefore, we propose to allocate Rs. 1,000 million to support the initial development and establishments of advanced scanning systems for the Port of Colombo and the Bandaranayake International Airport.”