A senior engineer involved in the Central Expressway and Ruwanpura Expressway projects has questioned why the Road Development Authority, the Ministry of Transport and Highways and the National Procurement Commission have not allowed proper competition in the tender process, warning that a flawed prequalification system risks billions of rupees in public funds.
The engineer, who spoke to the Daily Mirror on condition of anonymity, said the evidence is visible in the RDA’s own numbers.
On Central Expressway Project 3 (CEP3) Section 2, the RDA allowed only six local contractors to qualify for seven contract packages. With fewer bidders than contracts, the engineer said, competition was effectively eliminated and each contractor was almost guaranteed a share of the work.
Every bid came in above the Engineer’s Estimate — by between 16% and 21%. The total cost rose to Rs. 112.56 billion against an estimate of Rs. 94.69 billion, an excess of Rs. 17.87 billion ultimately borne by the public.
The contrast with the adjoining stretch is stark. On CEP3 Section 1, where the number of bidders exceeded the number of packages, bids came in between 38% and 42% below the Engineer’s Estimate, saving the government close to Rs. 5.9 billion.
“Where competition exists, Sri Lanka saves. Where it is restricted, the country pays more,” the engineer said, framing the difference as a systemic failure rather than a marginal deviation.
Sri Lanka has at least thirteen contractors holding CS2 grading from the Construction Industry Development Authority, the highest category in highway construction, the engineer said. Only six were allowed through on Section 2, with the rest filtered out by high financial thresholds and technical requirements.
Whether those thresholds were genuinely necessary, or were set in a way that effectively pre-selected a small group of contractors, is a question the Ministry of Transport and Highways and the National Procurement Commission must answer, the engineer told the Daily Mirror.
He also asked why no authority queried the fact that not a single bid on Section 2 came in below the Engineer’s Estimate — a pattern that in any competitive system should have triggered scrutiny on its own.
The RDA, the Ministry and the National Procurement Commission have not publicly responded to the criticism. The Daily Mirror report rests on a single anonymous source, though the bid figures and contractor counts it cites are specific and checkable against the authority’s own procurement records.
