The Potuhera-to-Rambukkana section of the Central Expressway is largely complete and is expected to open to the public by March next year, Road Development Authority Director General Anuradha Hettiarachchi said on Thursday.
Speaking in remarks reported by NewsFirst, Hettiarachchi laid out a wider pipeline of expressway work all to be financed from local funds and awarded primarily to domestic contractors.
“Work on the Potuhera to Rambukkana section is largely complete, and we expect to open it for public use by around March next year. Construction from Potuhera to Galagedara will also commence,” he said. The first specific opening date for this Central Expressway leg follows years of intermittent disclosures since the project was first announced.
The Rs. 112 billion Rambukkana–Galagedara road has received cabinet approval and will be split among seven local contracting companies, with completion targeted within three and a half years. Cabinet approved the package on May 12, and preparatory works on that corridor are already under way.
Two additional expressway projects are scheduled to start before the end of 2026. The Kurunegala–Dambulla section, up to Galewela, will be funded locally, with tenders for the Kurunegala-to-Galewela stretch likely to be awarded by year-end. “Procurement activities are already underway and designs have been finalised,” Hettiarachchi said.
The RDA also plans to recommence construction on the Ruwanpura Expressway, which was halted midway, up to Ingiriya within the next year. The restart had not previously been publicly confirmed.
The Director General said the agency’s working assumption is that all four projects can be carried forward without waiting for foreign loans. “Until external funding is secured, we will proceed using our own funds. Therefore, we do not foresee any financial difficulties with these projects,” he said.
The local-funding model marks a shift away from the donor-financed pattern that dominated Sri Lanka’s previous expressway build-out, and brings forward several projects whose timelines had slipped during the 2022 economic crisis.
