The lions and the white elephant

Last Sunday, Sri Lanka witnessed its men’s cricket and women’s netball teams go on to clinch the title of best in Asia in their respective sports. While these momentous victories were thoroughly celebrated, it was notably less enthusiastic owing to the shared reality of the ongoing economic hardships endured. 

With many pointing out the match being on a Sunday meant the power to watch through the innings, the lack of local broadcasting, price increases of alcohol, and other match viewing ingredients were hard to ignore. Nonetheless, the lions played impeccably, making the country proud and temporarily less mindful of the country’s situation. The PR of this victory has even been used to cover up the failure that is the Colombo Lotus Tower to be opened this week.

Since construction began in 2012 under former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Lotus Tower stands at 350 m or 1,155 feet, visible from all over Colombo. It was constructed for an estimated $ 113 million, plagued by corruption allegations. 

It is one of several white elephant projects built with loans obtained from Chinese lenders during Rajapaksa’s presidency. The State-owned Colombo Lotus Tower Management Company announced last Thursday that it would open its observation deck to visitors and, through issuing tickets, recoup losses.

The expensive maintenance costs lead to the doors being forcibly kept open, according to CEO Prasad Samarasinghe. The company intends to rent office spaces and retail space, as well as a revolving restaurant just below the observation deck with views of the congested capital and the Indian Ocean. According to broadcasters, the structure is useless as a communications tower because it cannot cover the island or improve current transmissions from its height. 

On Monday, it was aptly dubbed a “towering story of pride and waste”, referring to the nature of this vanity project attempting to replicate Beijing’s 405 m Central Radio and TV tower. From 2005 to 2015, having borrowed from China for unfeasible infrastructure projects, this almost adds insult to economic injury as a constant reminder of including such losses. 

The Central Bank, then led by Ajith Nivard Cabraal, had gushed that the proposal would facilitate the growth of TV, broadcasting, and communication services, as well as serve as a national requirement. The necessary feasibility study was never completed. A special Government audit conducted by the Project Consultancy Unit in 2019 discovered only the Project Consultancy Unit (PCU) report. 

When questioned about various flaws, the PCU responded that the study was done for free. The study was marred by scandalous issues, such as the use of an incorrect borrowing rate for project funding and not checking on later changes to the final report that added $ 9.3 million more to the cost of construction.  

The current economic crisis in Sri Lanka is being blamed in part on excessive Chinese debt accumulation, which accounts for more than 10% of Colombo's $ 47 billion in external borrowings and was not on favorable terms. 

The conditional bailout of $ 2.9 billion from the International Monetary Fund is largely dependent on the Government reaching an agreement with creditors, including China, to restructure its debt. So far, Beijing has only offered additional loans rather than reducing outstanding borrowings. China has loaned billions of dollars for infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe as part of its massive Belt and Road Initiative, which is burdening countries with debt.

With the match won, the ribbon cutting on the tower would only be slightly easier. Even the Rajapaksa administration's staunchest supporters admit that the Lotus Tower dream eluded them. The challenge now is to recoup something from it, if only to validate a project that had never made sense to the general public. The white elephant’s trumpet is to drown out the lion’s roar.