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Message: <blockquote data-quote="imhotep" data-source="post: 28561606" data-attributes="member: 562115">Why JICA?Mr. Mawilmada was among those who actively fended off these overtures. And he stuck firmly with JICA. “While it may be slower, it forces you to go through some kind of procurement process and through tenders and some level of transparency,” he explained. “I’m not saying any of these donors are gold standard but there is oversight, a degree of accountability and some monitoring. The concessional funding is also helpful, as is the capacity building.”Committing a project to an agency, Mr. Mawilmada thought, would insulate it from the “political back-and-forth”. Once a sovereign agreement was signed, he calculated, it wouldn’t matter what administration was in power.“These projects keep going and they get completed,” he said. “It makes it a little bit politics-proof and gives you stability over the longer term. I was proven wrong. But, then, nobody thought we would back out on so many sovereign agreements. The way it works around the world is that once you sign a sovereign agreement, things typically get done.”Implementation did roll on, initially. Feasibility studies were completed and the economic rate of return was deemed advantageous. There was a proper resettlement plan. Multiple Cabinet papers were approved for each stage. A project office worked full-time with 88 foreign and over 150 local consultants on drawings and other technicalities.The loan had a 40-year repayment period with a grace of 12 years. The annual interest rate was 0.1 percent. The project was to be implemented first in seven packages. Consultants were hired in March 2019, the same month a credit facility agreement was signed with JICA and a project memorandum entered into between the Megapolis Ministry, ERD and the agency.“The design was done, all the approvals were obtained, it was literally weeks away from going to tender,” said Mr. Mawilmada who had by then left the State sector.One of the earliest public hints of the cancellation came around March 2020. Priyath Bandu Wickrema, the then Secretary to the Urban Development Ministry, told the Sunday Times the Government will float a request for proposals for the LRT despite a loan agreement already being signed with JICA. The future of the project, he maintained, would be a public-private partnership (PPP)—an option that hadn’t even been studied.In September 2020, P.B. Jayasundera, Secretary to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, issued instructions to the Transport Ministry to terminate the LRT as it was “very costly and not the appropriate cost-effective transport solution for the urban Colombo transportation infrastructure”.The post-mortemDimantha de Silva, a senior lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, was closely involved in the LRT project. He was pitted against some other experts, including his former teacher, logistics and transport expert, Prof. Amal Kumarage, whom he claims actively campaigned against the light rail initiative.Dropping the LRT, Dr de Silva analysed, “was predominantly a political decision that was supported by officials with vested interest and the professional anti-infrastructure lobby groups who were against the LRT from the start”.These parties not only sabotaged the LRT project but were instrumental in the cancellation of the Kelani Valley (KV) railway line, he alleged: “Their misinformation and manipulation eventually provided justification for politicians with a vested interest. Their tool was the manipulation of the cost of the LRT. This was the only reason authorities gave to cancel the project.”In Sri Lanka, political parties often shelve projects started by an opposing party if they felt the public would support it once completed, Dr de Silva felt. The LRT was accepted by all Government agencies including the Central Bank, the Finance Ministry and the National Planning Department. But it was shelved without a review or discussion with the project management unit (PMU) or donor.This shows the decision was made even before the Government came to power, Dr. de Silva claimed: “The proof is that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was unreachable by the PMU or by any of the experts who worked in the project although he was ready to listen to people who were not part of it. Nor did Priyath Bandu, Secretary to the Ministry the project was under, give a chance to the PMU, consultants or experts to clear any questions he had.”Former PMU Head Chaminda Ariyadasa confirmed that his unit was prevented from speaking to key decision-makers, including President Rajapaksa. Like several others interviewed, he felt Mr. Priyath Bandu was opposed to the project from the outset. (Mr. Bandu declined to comment on the project and said he didn’t hold a related position at the time it was canned).The counter-viewAmong those Dr. de Silva blamed for the project’s demise is Prof. Kumarage.Prof. Kumarage told the Sunday Times that, even before the 2019 election, promised growth rates in the Megapolis Plan were found not to have been realised. Moreover, the conversion from monorail to LRT had heightened the cost.“As any credible professional, I have spoken publicly when questioned about these facts,” he said. “Rather than opposing the LRT, I worked on bus lanes from 2017 onwards—formulating a proposal for bus reform and modernisation that was taken up for funding by the MCC (the Millennium Challenge Corporation). Post-2019, however, that too was shot down for rather shameful extraneous reasons.”“I still maintain that the LRT is only best as a long-term option and that we’ve neglected the many short-term options that should have been taken up before that,” Prof. Kumarage insisted. “The current state of transport in the Western Province is due to this grave error.”He emphasised that the LRT should be preceded by bus and rail development; and that Sri Lanka “should negotiate with JICA to use its most attractive loan for other projects than the JICA plan recommended”. This includes railway electrification and bus rapid transit (BRT).Prof. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan, a transport economist, is blamed for arguing against the LRT at an engineers’ meeting with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (when it was some aspects of the KV line electrification that he had criticised in a widely-circulated video clip). While he had headed a Cabinet committee to re-review pubic investment proposals, the LRT did not come to them, he said.The committee was informed by ERD that the LRT proposal was withdrawn and “there was no necessity for us to study it”. “Our committee (though we are—and, particularly, I am—blamed for a cancellation of the LRT) mentioned in our report that the Government should recognise the necessity of a sound public transport solution for the Colombo-Battaramulla corridor, given its traffic conditions, and should get the Department of National Planning to study alternatives,” he told the Sunday Times.Prof. Gunaruwan, however, remains sceptical about foreign-funded projects saying it is best to use local resources without accumulating foreign debt. Even when there was no alternative, it was imperative for the Government to ensure it has the right technology at the right price through international competitive bidding. This option wasn’t usually available in bilateral loans, he said.The conceptual fault lines—all of which came into play during the project process—are, therefore, clear. They were incredibly difficult to manage, officials confess.The cancellationBut the decision to pull out was the Government’s. And the price was not only the LRT but a longstanding bilateral relationship that lost the crucial element of trust. The information void and the lack of explanation or accountability were stark to the Japanese.While JICA could have taken all the remedial measures available to it against the abrogation, it didn’t. Neither did the consultants—who are still owed Rs 5.1bn for work done—opt for arbitration (something that would’ve worked against Sri Lanka).The conversion from monorail to light rail did drive the cost up. The required infrastructure became bigger and the civil works component nearly doubled, experts said. But there was a firm belief in a long-term advantage. And the loan was “deeply concessional”.The LRT was to have been the first step in a massive modernisation of Sri Lanka’s transportation network, Mr. Mawilmada said: “And if you put your first foot with Japanese technology and suppliers, which are among the best in the world, you know it’s going to work and keep working.”The LRT wasn’t the be-all and end-all, he explained. It was to have been part of a systemic change for Colombo that included parallel bus modernisation under the MCC grant (70-80 percent was for public road transport) and suburban rail modernisation with Asian Development Bank funding. The last administration canceled them all.In the end, a handful of people made decisions that they never properly explained which left Sri Lanka with nothing.JICA refused to comment on whether the Sri Lankan Government has asked for a resumption of the LRT or whether it is willing to do so, and under what conditions.</blockquote>

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