By: Staff Writer
March 27, Colombo (LNW): The government is eyeing to promote the registration of ships under the Sri Lankan flag in a bid to general direct and indirect employment opportunities.
As such, the Cabinet of Ministers has green-lighted a proposal, tabled by the Minister of Ports, Shipping and Aviation seeking permission to invite qualified domestic and foreign investors to register ships under the Sri Lankan flag.
The government will thus call Expressions of Interest (EOIs) and proposals to select the most suitable investor on the recommendation of the Procurement Committee, consequent to the evaluation of the proposals by a Technical Evaluation Committee.
Ship registration is a major source of foreign exchange to the country’s economy and has the potential to generate many direct and indirect employment opportunities, the government said in a statement
The Ports, Shipping, and Aviation Ministry is to convert the ships, ports, and total maritime industry to zero emissions in the future.
Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said, as far as the maritime industry is concerned, the primitive maritime industry is no more there. We are going to zero emissions such as ammonia, hydrogen, and green energy.
“That transformation is not easy; it needs a lot of money and professionalism. It is a question of how we are going to build that. Therefore, we have to ensure that we make changes to our ports, ships and services very soon. We have to start with it, not itself; otherwise, we will be lacking behind the other countries in which we are competing in maritime,” the minister said.
However, thankful to the Indian government, we have taken action to expand the port activities, he said.
“I have already taken action for the ship registration. We had been unable to attract more and more ships to be registered in Sri Lanka, as many other countries do. We are employing the private sector for that because we cannot keep everything in the government. We need to spread our economy more widely,” Minister Silva said.
One of the obstacles we face in registering ships is that we do not have enough ships owned by us. We have only two ships in the shipping company he added
