Having failed miserably to attract even half the USD 2.0 billion target of Foreign Direct Investments for 2012 and with the writing on the wall for 2013, minister Basil Rajapaksa had conveniently passed the headache to Luxman Yapa Abeywardene, UNP National List MP Dr. Harsha de Silva said.
In a statement issued to the media, Dr De Silva said: "The first test is to see if he succeeds in completing the delayed payment from Krrish Group for the 4-acre Transworks land that was handed over without any transparent procedure. As deputy minister on 24 November 2012 he announced that Krrish would complete the full payment of LKR 5,000 million by 15 December 2012. It is now known that this has not materialized.
"The fact, as we have subsequently unearthed, is that the payment-plan has been altered three times in total contravention to the Cabinet decision No. 11/0803/519/010 of 4 April 2011. The original legal agreement was that Krrish would make a 20 percent payment immediately and the remaining 80 percent at the time of signing the lease agreement.
The payment plan however had been amended without a new Cabinet approval on 30 July to pay 10 percent immediately, 50 percent on signing the lease agreement and the remaining 40 percent in 6 months. Then once again it had been amended without Cabinet approval to make a 10 percent payment immediately and thereafter to make the remaining 90 percent payment at on signing the lease agreement.
"However according to the newly appointed minister 10 percent had been paid and around the day the remaining 90 percent was to be paid, that is 15 December 2012 as per his own statement in Parliament, another 28 percent had been paid. This is a strange development to say the least, as according to statements in Parliament the only hindrance in signing the lease agreement was the vesting on two small blocks of land to the UDA, but that too had been completed several weeks back.
It seems that Krrish, who is desperately attempting to raise money locally by pre-selling apartments at over LKR 100 million per unit, is unable to come up with the money.
"However before passing judgment on the new minister of investment promotion we shall see how quickly he gets the Krrish Group to make the now seriously overdue payment."
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