Work on three expressway projects — Katunayake–Chilaw, Kurunegala–Dambulla and Kahatuduwa–Ingiriya — will begin this year, Minister of Transport Bimal Ratnayake told Parliament on Tuesday.
The minister gave no contract values, timelines or funding sources for the three, and did not say at what point in the year work would start on each.
Two of the three are already in the pipeline
Two of the routes named are continuations of projects already approved rather than new starts.
The Kahatuduwa–Ingiriya stretch is Phase 1 of the Ruwanpura Expressway, for which Cabinet cleared a Rs. 15 billion procurement on July 29. That decision authorised the Road Development Authority to run a tender and appoint a contractor within 2026, and covers a system interchange at Kahatuduwa linking the new road to the existing Southern Expressway. The Ruwanpura project was halted midway and has been awaiting a restart since.
The Kurunegala–Dambulla route is the northern continuation of the Central Expressway. Here the minister’s framing sits slightly ahead of the RDA’s published position: the funded and tendered section is Kurunegala to Galewela, not all the way to Dambulla, and the RDA’s stated plan has been to award tenders for that stretch by year-end rather than to have construction underway. In August, the President ordered the resumption of road projects halted since 2022, with the Kurunegala–Galewela section among the main items discussed — along with unresolved difficulties in land compensation on that stretch.
The Chilaw route is the new item
The Katunayake–Chilaw expressway is the one genuinely new element in Tuesday’s statement. It has not appeared in previous ministry or RDA announcements covered by this desk, and the minister did not indicate whether it has Cabinet approval, a route survey or an identified funding source.
A link from Katunayake to Chilaw would extend the expressway network north along the western coastal corridor from the Colombo–Katunayake Expressway, which currently terminates near Bandaranaike International Airport.
Ada Derana also reported the minister’s remarks, but its site returned a CloudFront block throughout this cycle and its account could not be read or cited.
