Fisheries Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekar on Thursday inspected a 55-foot vessel valued at approximately USD 250,000 being built by Ceynor Foundation Limited at its Mattakkuliya shipyard for a private client in Mauritius. The vessel is roughly 90 percent complete and is expected to be handed over to the buyer in the coming weeks.
Addressing officials at the yard, Chandrasekar said the Government aimed to develop Ceynor into “an international-level dockyard” using the institution’s existing human and technical resources. A significant share of Sri Lanka’s fishing fleet had been built by the company, he said, and the Government planned to expand its production capacity with technical cooperation sought from Norway and Japan.
Ceynor Chairman Wasantha Mannapperuma said the company was targeting four large vessels annually using its Mattakkuliya and Karainagar yards, with the programme expected to generate more than USD 1 million in foreign exchange earnings each year.
The initiative is positioned within the Fisheries Ministry’s four-year plan to lift fisheries export revenue from USD 300 million to USD 600 million. It is the first time a Sri Lankan state-owned fisheries entity has built a vessel for foreign export at this scale this cycle, complementing earlier Cabinet-level fuel subsidy support for the fisheries sector and the Government’s Norway-Sri Lanka Blue Justice agreement on monitoring technologies.
The Mauritius order also coincides with a broader push to expand bilateral economic ties with Indian Ocean partners as Sri Lanka navigates forex pressures that have made non-traditional dollar earnings increasingly valuable.
Source: Newswire — Fisheries Minister inspects Ceynor vessel built for Mauritius client.
