Sri Lanka’s second international airport

Development projects in a country must be encouraged, appreciated and endorsed. In this context, Sri Lanka’s second international airport – the Mattala International Airport – in the President’s home base of Hambantota must be applauded.

While there are issues and allegations relating to the cost and location; in a wider perspective, a second international airport is necessary and a pre-requisite for the kind of post-war development Sri Lanka is looking at.

Tomorrow’s opening of the Mattala airport by the President is with a lot of fanfare including a group of around 100 people flying in from the US organized by the Sri Lankan mission there.

Last year Sri Lanka celebrated 100 years of aviation and the Business Times has been running a connected series profiling the pioneers of Air Ceylon, the country’s first national carrier.

In this issue too, a former stewardess, now 85 years old, recalls the nostalgic past during the heyday of Sri Lanka’s fledging airline. On the same page, another veteran aviator discusses the progress of the airline industry after World War II and the developments thereafter.

Since the battle with Tamil Tiger militants ended in May 2009, the country has seen a surge in tourist arrivals. This year arrivals are expected to touch 1.2 million, a far cry from 438,000 in 2008.

The increasing arrivals have also seen the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) bursting at its seams, longer queues and more complaints. Geared to cater to six million passengers per year, the numbers have sharply increased with more Sri Lankans also travelling and the infrastructure creaking.In recent times, SriLankan Airlines, which provides all the ground handling at the airport, has installed a kiosk for quick check-ins in addition to other facilities to ensure a smoother flow of outbound traffic.

For inbound traffic, more immigration counters have been opened to facilitate the flow. The BIA is separately into another phase of development to raise capacity to handle some 12 million passengers a year.

With such major development plans on hand, one may argue why spend a colossal US$200 million to create Mattala when the BIA would be geared in the few years’ time to handle the growing traffic?

There are pros and cons to this argument. On one side, Sri Lanka can ill-afford unnecessary expenditure – particularly costs of this nature - while on the other hand, a second airport is necessary.

Most developing countries have at least two international airports supplementing each other, particularly in the crisis.

Thus the need for a second airport cannot be challenged.

However the location of the second airport at Hambantota is obviously influenced by politics and to improve the region fostered by the President and his kith and kin. Hambantota, for the same reasons, is seeing massive development – transforming from a once backward, forgotten city to that seeing the biggest development in the country.

The region now has a seaport, an airport, a massive convention hall, an international cricket stadium and other infrastructure coming up like international sports stadiums. Not even the capital of Colombo has seen such mega development over the years. Some of the roads in Hambantota are probably the widest in Sri Lanka.

The economic rationale of locating the airport at Hambantota is based on the availability of land and longer travel time from Colombo airport to outlying areas particularly the south and central and eastern regions. In a sense, this is true. It would take less time to travel to resorts in the south upto Bentota, to the eastern districts of Batticaloa, Ampara and Trincomalee, and the hill station of Nuwara Eliya from Hambantota. The southern highway which is due to extend to Matara would also facilitate faster access from Hambantota.

Even in the non-influential Rajapaksa era some decades back, Hambantota was touted as the best location for Sri Lanka’s second international seaport due to its close proximity to key shipping lanes.

Ironically, Hambantota was the poorest region in the country many years ago along with Monaragala but the recent transformation is anything but poor. However whether residents of the city are sharing the fruits of this mega development remains to be seen.So far just a few airlines have confirmed flights to Mattala while others are on the wayside assessing whether it makes business sense to fly to the south. More passenger and cargo airlines need to fly to Mattala to make it viable. Otherwise this project will end up as a burden on the Treasury and the taxpayer. The Hambantota port is yet to see the returns that would make it economically viable.

Thus while Sri Lanka’s second airport is a welcome addition to the country’s development, it must ensure its viability in the next few years rather than dipping into Treasury resources, which is a route often taken by many mega projects.