Basil washes hands off FDI by dumping it on Lakshman, claims Harsha

UNP MP and chief spokesman on the economy Dr. Harsha de Silva yesterday in a statement said having failed miserably to attract even half the US$ 2 billion target of Foreign Direct Investments for 2012 and with the writing on the wall for 2013, Minister Basil Rajapaksa has conveniently passed the headache to Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene.

In his statement, Dr. de Silva also said:

The first test is to see if he succeeds in completing the delayed payment from Krrish Group for the four-acre Transworks land that was handed over without any transparent procedure.

As Deputy Minister on 24 November 2012 he announced that Krrish would complete the full payment of Rs. 5,000 million by 15 December 2012. It is now known that this has not materialised.

The fact, as we have subsequently unearthed, is that the payment-plan has been altered three times in total contravention to the Cabinet decision No. 11/0803/519/010 of 4 April 2011. The original legal agreement was that Krrish would make a 20 per cent payment immediately and the remaining 80 per cent at the time of signing the lease agreement.

The payment plan however had been amended without a new Cabinet approval on 30 July to pay 10 per cent immediately, 50 per cent on signing the lease agreement and the remaining 40 per cent in six months. Then once again it had been amended without Cabinet approval to make a 10 per cent payment immediately and thereafter to make the remaining 90 per cent payment on signing the lease agreement.

However, according to the newly-appointed Minister, 10 per cent had been paid and around the day the remaining 90 per cent was to be paid, that is 15 December 2012 as per his own statement in Parliament, another 28 per cent had been paid. This is a strange development to say the least, as according to statements in Parliament the only hindrance in signing the lease agreement was the vesting on two small blocks of land to the UDA, but that too had been completed several weeks back. It seems that Krrish, which is desperately attempting to raise money locally by pre-selling apartments at over Rs. 100 million per unit, is unable to come up with the money.  

However, before passing judgment on the new Minister of Investment Promotion, we shall see how quickly he gets the Krrish Group to make the now seriously overdue payment.