A Malaysian company has shown interest in setting up monorail operations in Colombo, according to a top Malaysian government official in town. 
“An interest has already been registered to the government of Sri Lanka in this regard,” Malaysian Prime Ministers’ Special Envoy (Ministerial rank) to India & South Asia on Infrastructure Dato Seri Utama S. Samy Vellu told Mirror Business. 

Special Envoy Samy Vellu and his team are currently in Colombo on a fact-finding mission at the invitation of the Sri Lankan government, to explore possibilities on how Malaysia and its thriving private sector can chip in to develop Sri Lanka’s physical infrastructure.

The company that has shown interest is a unit of Bursa Malaysia listed Scomi Group Berhard, a company mainly involved in oil & gas and transport engineering.

Scomi Group’s transportation arm is credited with the designing and constructing of the monorail in Kuala Lumpur and Mumbai. The company in 2011 was able to secure a monorail project in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

According to Special Envoy Samy Vellu, although Scomi is a private sector company, the possible undertaking of a monorail project will be carried out on a G2G (government to government) basis. 

He also said that they have earmarked certain other infrastructure projects for which they can find Malaysian private sector investors.  
The investments will be carried out on a BOT (build, operate and transfer) model, he noted.