Colombo will regain its reputation as the garden city of the East through the government’s on-going urban renewal projects, according to Secretary to the Ministry of Defence and Urban Development, Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

“We need to develop clean, green and people-friendly cities. There have been many projects undertaken by the ministry and all of them have been initiated with these objectives in order to address the problems that have arisen as a result of the previously unregulated development of the city.”

“To this end, the institutional capacities of urban and municipal councils are being improved. We are promoting green growth and in future Colombo will once again be known as the garden city of the East,” Rajapaksa stated.

 Rajapaksa made the comments during his keynote address at the Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) CXO Lunch Briefing on the topic: ‘Future Outlook for Urban Infrastructure Development in Sri Lanka’.

Several government facilitated projects are currently underway in Colombo City under the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project including an extensive drainage rehabilitation programme in the area surrounding the Beira Lake and the model zone development of Town Hall Square.

Nevertheless, Rajapaksa reiterated the government’s commitment to the development of Sri Lanka’s other main urban centres citing examples of on-going development projects in Jaffna and Galle and Gampaha.

Rajapaksa noted that improvements to urban infrastructure were part of a larger effort from the government to spark higher growth through investment into targeted sectors of Sri Lanka’s economy, including amongst others, the country’s fast growing information technology and business process outsourcing sectors.

“Sri Lanka has lost countless opportunities as a result of the conflict with the LTTE and now that the country is peaceful and stable, we need to make up for those lost opportunities. SLASSCOM and the IT BPO industry will have an important part to play in this development drive,” he stated.

Whilst a measure of the size of the industry remains elusive, SLASSCOM, the apex body of the industry, has recorded a 20 percent year-onyear growth in membership, which is according to SLASSCOM Director Sujiva Dewaraja, a parallel indicator of the industry’s growth.