Sri Lanka FDI flows reach $430mn in first half 2013

The money had come mainly from Chinese and Hong Kong based companies with top sectors being tourism, mixed development projects and manufacturing, Lakshman Jayaweera, head of the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka said. Officials said they were keeping a target of 2.0 billion US dollars because a large volume of FDI tended to come in the third and fourth quarter. Recently signed large mixed developments with gaming operations amounting to about a billion US dollars were not included in the calculations, officials said. Among the deals that were earmarked to begin investments in the second half of the year was Shangri-La of Hong Kong, China's Colombo International Container Terminal, India's ITC hotel, Krissh mixed development. A heavy industrial zone and a coal plant by India's National Thermal Power Corporation was also expected to begin in the second half, officials said. On Monday, Malaysia's Dialog Axiata signed a deal to invest 150 million dollars in mobile, fiber optics and a cable landing station which will be spread over the next two years. Dialog has become the top foreign investor in Sri Lanka, spending a total of 1.5 billion US dollars, with the latest tranche, which includes foreign borrowings and re-investments of internally generated equity.