Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2020-11-30

Appointment of a Committee to look into the irregularities that occurred in the Grand Hyatt Project

- The Grand Hyatt Hotel Project is implemented by the Sino Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, which possesses the ownership of the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, Employees’ Provident Fund and Litro Gas Lanka Ltd. The hotel was scheduled to open in business activities during the first quarter of 2016 afterwards the completion of construction. Provided that, most of the agreements signed by the previous Government were terminated by the new board of directors of the Sino Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. which was appointed following the 2015 presidential election without any justifiable reason and has been entered into agreements with new contractors for aforementioned work phases. Therefore, some companies have initiated legal proceedings and it has been decided that the Sino Lanka (Pvt) Ltd shall pay approximately a sum of Rs.1.8 billion as compensation. The current cost of the the project, which was originally planned to be completed at an estimated cost of Rs.30 billion , has been re-estimated to be around Rs.60 billion. Therefore, approval has been granted by the Cabinet for proposal made by the Hon. Prime Minister in his capacity as the Minister of Finance to appoint a committee to investigate whether the Government has incurred a financial loss as it appears that the situation has arisen due to the irregularities committed by the previous management of the Sino Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.