Officials from the World Bank and the Presidential Secretariat met on Monday to discuss developing Colombo Fort as a tourism zone under World Bank loans and grants, along with wider measures to promote Sri Lanka’s tourism industry.
The meeting brought together World Bank Country Manager for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Gevorg Sargsyan and a delegation of Bank officials with Chief of Staff to the President Prabath Chandrakeerthi, the President’s Media Division said in a statement.
Talks focused on matters that arose at an earlier meeting chaired by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on the proposed development of Colombo Fort as a tourism destination while preserving its historic heritage.
Beyond tourism
World Bank representatives said they were prepared to provide further support to promote the tourism industry and to help Sri Lanka meet its targets in other key sectors, including agribusiness, ports and logistics, and energy.
The meeting also explored potential Bank support for the Colombo Fort tourism zone itself, for nature-based tourism, and for expanding tourism activity in the Northern and Eastern provinces — regions that draw a small share of the country’s visitors relative to the south and the central hills.
Stephan Massing, Senior Operations Officer in the World Bank’s Sri Lanka and Maldives management unit, and Asela Dissanayake, Chief Operations Officer of the delegation, also attended.
Context
Colombo Fort is the colonial-era commercial quarter at the heart of the capital, holding a dense concentration of Dutch and British-period buildings alongside the working port and the main railway terminus. Proposals to turn it into a heritage tourism precinct have circulated for years without a financing route; World Bank involvement would mark the first concrete backing for the idea under the current government.
Sargsyan has been the Bank’s main interlocutor with Colombo on structural reform, having discussed state institution reform with the government in May.
The talks come as the tourism sector is under pressure. Earnings from tourism fell 10.4% in July year-on-year to US$285.5 million, according to central bank figures quoting the tourism promotion authority, and Sri Lanka has revised its arrivals target down to 2.7 million from 3 million for the year.
Neither the President’s Media Division nor Ada Derana put a value on the potential World Bank support, gave a timeline for the Colombo Fort project, or said when a decision would be taken. As of early Tuesday, no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own report of the meeting, though several aggregator sites carried the PMD statement.
