Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-08-01

Restructure of the ownership of the Hyatt Hotel

- The policy of the government is to promote rapid, sustainable and inclusive economic development by improving competitiveness and the performance of the state owned enterprises under its control. Accordingly, the government has planned to restructure the ownership of a several selected non‑strategic state owned enterprises.

A further substantial investment has to be made, in order to develop it to its full potential owned by the Grand Hyatt Hotel project constructed by the Canwill holdings (Pvt) Ltd. belonging to the Government Institutions namely the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation, Litro Gas Company and the Employees' Provident Fund. As there are other priority issues, incurring of further funds of the public institutions for a luxury hotel project of this nature which serves foreign tourists and only a handful of high net worth individuals in Sri Lanka is not appropriate and as such, it has been decided to call for private investment for the project.

Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Kabir Hashim, the Minister of Public Enterprise Development, to appoint a Procurement Committee and a Technology Evaluation Committee to select suitable private investors to divest the government owned shares of the Canwill Holdings (Pvt) Ltd. implementing the Grand Hyatt Hotel Project, was approved by the Cabinet.