President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Tuesday directed a government committee to draft a “new, time-appropriate” policy to release underutilised state lands for productive use, in a move officials say is meant to widen the pool of land available to investors without rewriting the underlying ordinances.
The President met the Circular Revision Committee — appointed to review and update circulars issued under the State Lands Ordinance and the Land Development Ordinance — at the Presidential Secretariat in the afternoon, the President’s Media Division said in remarks reported by Newswire. The committee is chaired by D.P. Wickramasinghe, Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Lands and Irrigation, with the Commissioner General of Lands Chandana Ranaweraarachchi as Convener.
The committee has been mandated to recommend to the Cabinet which existing circulars should be cancelled, where new circulars are needed and how surviving directives should be revised to match current requirements. Its remit also covers building “a reliable, uniform and regularised system of land taxation” within the existing legal framework, including a review of annual lease rentals charged on long-term leases and grants, so that state revenue can be optimised without prejudice to lessees.
Membership includes the Senior Additional Secretary to the President for Constitutional and Statutory Affairs, the Legal Adviser to the Presidential Secretariat, an Additional Solicitor General from the Attorney General’s Department, the Additional Secretary (Lands), the Additional Director General of the National Budget Department, the Western Province Land Commissioner, the Divisional Secretary of Nuwaragampalatha East, the Deputy Chief Valuer and the Director (Lands) of the Mahaweli Authority.
Deputy Minister of Lands and Irrigation Aravinda Senarath, Secretary to the President Dr. Nandika Sanath Kumanayake, Senior Attorney-at-Law J.M. Wijebandara and President’s Counsel Ravindra Pathiranage also attended.
The directive comes weeks after Dissanayake warned of US dollar-crisis risks and flagged a new Investment Protection Act at a Central Expressway groundbreaking. It also follows the Plantation Ministry’s Phase 2 investor programme for estate land in seven districts, which uses Cabinet-leased estate parcels rather than the underlying State Lands Ordinance regime under review here.
