India To Sri Lanka: Forget China, we want your empty airport
$416.96 million proposal by India pumping into the airport for a 70 per cent share for 40 years.
An Indian company has emerged with a bold plan for taking over Sri Lanka’s struggling Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport (MRIA). The proposal, which would see India pumping US$205 million (FJ$416.96m) into the airport for a 70 per cent share for 40 years, was approved by Sri Lanka’s Civil Aviation Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva and sent on to the country’s cabinet for review. While Sri Lanka has received a total of eight proposals from various other parties -- including China -- to take over the airport, the Indian plan is reportedlybeing reviewed on its own.
For many years, there was a very strong demand for Sri Lanka to add additional international aviation capacity. Air traffic through Colombo was getting too heavy, and the country either had to add an additional runway there or build or expand another airport elsewhere.
At a cost of $209 million — most of which came from China — Sri Lanka chose the latter option, building Mattala International far out in southern Hambantota district, a 250 kilometre drive from Colombo.
This airport started out as a key part of an ambitious plan by Sri Lanka’s former president Mahinda Rajapaksa to transform his extremely rural hometown region into Sri Lanka’s number two metropolis.
In addition to the airport, there would be a $1.4 billion (FJ$2.85bn) deep sea port, a large industrial and export processing zone, an exhibition centre, a large cricket stadium, and a hotel and leisure area that would be connected together by some of the country’s best highways. The idea was that all of these large projects would rise up together and support each other. It was an all or nothing wager placed on creating an entirely new economy out in the middle of the bush.
However, this great scheme has yet to come to fruition. Being located in a remote area in an under-developed part of the country, Mattala airport had difficulty attracting both passengers and airlines. Only one or two flights per day currently stop there, and, according to the Sri Lankan government, the 3000 flights that touched down at the airport in 2014 served just 21,000 passengers -- a mere seven passenger per plane average.
This has led to MRIA being dubbed the “world’s emptiest international airport,” with its vacant corridors, gates, and tarmac serving as more of an attraction for curious journalists than actual passengers.