Nirupama
Subramanian
R. K.
Radhakrishnan
November
2, 2012 | The Hindu
Photo:
R.K. Radhakrishnan
PORT OF ENTRY: If India is concerned at the Chinese involvement in Hambantota’s
development, it seems keen not to be seen that way.
Photo:
R.K. Radhakrishnan
Hambantota -- from a small fishing harbour to a flashy new city with a modern
port.
LETTER FROM LANKA: The planned metamorphosis of Hambantota, from
a small fishing harbour to a flashy new city with a modern port — with Chinese
help — is symbolic of what President Rajapaksa wants the country to be
At the other end from Jaffna, on the map and in
every other way, is what some Sri Lankans refer to, only half-jokingly, as Sri
Lanka’s new capital.
Hambantota is located about 220 km from Colombo,
on the southern coast that is the island’s bulgy bottom. It falls in the
parliamentary constituency of Namal Rajapaksa, son of President Mahinda
Rajapaksa.
The constituency has long been in the Rajapaksa
family. Still, it bears little resemblance to the small fishing harbour town it
was about a dozen years ago, when Rajapaksa senior, elected from here, was a cabinet
minister-in-charge of fisheries in Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government.
Fast track
For one, getting there does not take as long as
it used to. On a flashy new four-lane expressway, the 96 km drive from the
capital to Galle, takes exactly one hour, one-third of the time it used to
previously. From there to the Rajapaksa fiefdom is another three hours.
Built — with grants from the Asian Development
Bank (ADB) and Japan — by the China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd., and
inaugurated in November 2011, the smooth expressway cuts through lush green
forests and hills, as scenic in its way as the coastal two-lane Galle Road.
With funding from China’s Exim Bank, the
expressway is proposed to be extended by about 35 km to Matara, and will
eventually connect the remaining 70 km to Hambantota. This time, China National
Technical Import and Export Corporation is the builder.
But driving on Sri Lanka’s first expressway is
not cheap. The toll costs SL Rs.400 one-way, one reason it has not yet pulled
in enough traffic.
Reflective of Lankan policy
Forget the road though. The government expects
people to be flying to Hambantota soon. An international airport is rapidly
coming up at nearby Mattala. The contractor is the same as the one who built
Hambantota’s new inland port — China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd.
The Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa Port itself is
meant to be symbolic of what President Rajapaksa wants his country to be:
sleekly modern, confident, proud of itself, and not beholden to western powers,
or in his words, a reflection of Sri Lanka’s “non-alignment and friendship with
all.”
Put another way, China’s Exim Bank is financing
85 per cent of the cost of the $1.5 billion project, with the balance coming
from the Sri Lankan government. Of this, the cost of the first phase, with its
four berths and buildings, was $508 million.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, the completed
Phase 1 dazzled impressively under the blazing sun, the blue of the quay
buildings tastefully merging into the colour of the sea.
Kasun Dasantha, the young project engineer
assigned to show us around, underlined that China had only loaned the money, at
an interest rate of 6.5 per cent, and that the port will have to start showing
results in order to begin repayments by the scheduled calendar of May 2013.
For months after its inauguration in November
2010, residents of Hambantota heard deep explosive blasts from the port,
reportedly strong enough to cause cracks in some houses in the town. But the
engineer dismissed as “gossips” reports that a rock had been belatedly
discovered at the mouth of the port, and had to be blasted out of the way. The
sounds, he said, were from the breaking of the buffer wall, so that the
seawater could be let into the port to operationalise it.
From April 2012, ships have been calling at the
port. The berths are not equipped yet with cranes. At the moment they offer
only roll-on, roll-off facilities, ideal for car shipments. Hyundai India is
also using the port for trans-shipment, given that the charges are near zero.
Unfortunately, the port’s opening has coincided
with bad times for the economy the world over. In addition, Sri Lanka has
slapped heavy taxes on car imports. Late last year, the declining Sri Lankan
rupee, and ballooning imports necessitated a series of extreme measures to
contain credit growth and curtail imports. Many imports were taxed, among them
automobiles. Automobile imports have since slowed significantly. As a result,
ships are arriving with fewer cars; and The Sunday Times reported
recently that more than 5,000 cars were going to be sent back because they had
no takers.
But work at the port continues apace. An Indian
sugar firm and a Pakistani cement company, the local trading house Hayleys and
a Singapore petrochemical company have been roped in to set up their factories
close to the port. They enjoy an extended tax holiday, whose terms are said to
be much better than in the export processing zones in India.
In phases
Work on Phase 2 is also ongoing, and expected to
be completed by 2014. Phase 3 is still in the conceptual stages and could take
as long as a decade more. The completed port is being designed as the largest
port in South Asia, with a capacity for 33 vessels.
More than a container terminal, however, the
port sees itself as offering bunkering and ship handling services on a scale
unimaginable at Colombo port. A massive oil tank farm has come up at one end.
Eventually, it is planned also as storage for aviation fuel to refuel planes
that will land at the international airport.
An avant-garde sculpture of a ship in concrete
looms at the port’s entrance, over the sea view, a massive metal buoy balanced
on top of it.
Engraved on the sculpture is President
Rajapaksa’s mission statement: “…the blessed port bestowed upon the great
nation after the glorious victory of the century, which has been constructed in
line with the crusade of making Sri Lanka the miracle of South Asia.”
Aside from the names of engineers and others who
worked on the port, the sculpture also carries prominently the names of 385
families displaced by the new port.
The government acquired about 4,000 acres of
land for the port, and the displaced have been relocated in Hambantota New
Town. With its wide roads and massive government buildings, the Nay Pyi
Taw-look alike is coming up a little distance from the original fishing town.
The jewels in this crown are a botanical garden,
zoned residential “precincts,” parks, a fast rising state-of-the-art convention
centre, a massive modern stadium, already functioning, and a modern auditorium.
Shangri La, the Chinese hotel chain, is readying to construct a five-star
property soon.
The mind-boggling scale of infrastructure
development seems to be ahead of demand, and compared to the rest of the
country, even over-the-top. For instance, it is not clear if there would be enough
traffic for an international airport at Hambantota. Some even question the
prospects of the port.
But in Rajapaksa country, there can be no half
measures. Ask the street lights. Mounted on poles are rotating lamps, with
pictures of all the important Rajapaksas on their glass panes, fittingly
powered by their own individual windmills and solar panels.
When the port is completed, said Dasantha, the
port’s project engineer, it would provide direct employment to 5,000 local
people. At the moment, that number is about 250. An equal number of Chinese and
Sri Lankan workers were involved in building Phase I.
The Chinese are also noticeably involved in
other projects in town. A Chinese firm is doing the Hambantota “hub”
development road/project. At a clover interchange in the bypass road junction,
Chinese road signs alongside English ones announce detours and “work in
progress.”
If India is concerned at the Chinese involvement
in Hambantota’s development, it seems keen not to be seen that way. But it now
has a consulate in this town (It is the only diplomatic post here.) The
consulate issues about 800 visas a year, and hosts well-attended cultural shows
in the Japanese-built auditorium.
