Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming December 2014 6 Reimagining Sri Lanka S ri Lanka’s capital of Colombo is being transformed by Chinese-funded infrastructure. The latest and most audacious investment involves a massive land reclamation project to create an ultra-modern extension of the city itself. These new additions to the skyline, along with the natural wonders and treasured heritage that abound throughout the “Pearl of the Indian Ocean,” as the island nation is known, offer a unique backdrop to the three resort casinos being developed around the city’s master-planned entertainment hub at Beira Lake. As a package, it certainly seems compelling enough to draw the high-end tourists both the government and the resort developers are after. Cover Story In September 2013, it would have taken up to two hours to drive along winding potholed roads to get from Bandaranaike International Airport to Sri Lanka’s capital of Colombo. A month later, the drive time was slashed to 30 minutes with the unveiling of the new US$292 million, 25.8-kilometer-long Colombo-Katunayake Expressway funded by the Export-Import Bank of China. For visitors headed to the Beira Lake district around which the city’s three upcoming casino resorts will be centered, the journey from the airport to a mid-town hotel is now quick and painless. China is investing big in Sri Lanka—last year it became the leading source of foreign direct investment, supplying 24% of the total $1.42 billion recorded, with Hong Kong providing another 12%. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the country in September, and while he was there inaugurated Sri Lanka’s biggest electricity generator, a Chinese-funded $1.3 billion, 900-megawatt coal power plant which enabled President Mahinda Rajapaksa to slash citizens’ electricity tariffs by 25% with immediate effect, a move tailor-made to score him populist points ahead of provincial council elections that same month and his own run for a third term in early 2015. Also during his visit, President Xi launched the construction of the Chinese-financed $1.4 billion Colombo Port City, the largest ever foreign- funded investment in Sri Lanka. The Port City is being built alongside an already existing Chinese-built mega-port by a unit of state-controlled China Communications Construction Co. on 233 hectares of reclaimed land, an area slightly larger thanMonaco. The offices, hotels, apartments and shopping centers that will occupy the Port City are expected to draw as much as $20 billion in investment over 15 years, according to Sri Lanka Ports Authority Chairman Priyath Wickrama. The Chinese-financed $1.4 billion Colombo Port City , the largest foreign-funded investment in Sri Lanka on record, with plans that call for offices, hotels, apartments and shopping centers, is expected to draw as much as $20 billion in investment over 15 years. The reclamation of land for the project kicked off in September.