COLOMBO —
A huge green and purple communications tower in
Sri Lanka financed with Chinese
debt that has become a symbol of the ousted Rajapaksa clan’s closeness to
Beijing will finally open this week, its operator said Monday.
اضافة اعلان
The 350m Lotus
Tower — visible from all over Colombo and built for an estimated $113 million —
has been plagued by corruption claims since construction began in 2012 under
former president Mahinda Rajapaksa.
It is one of
several “white elephant” projects built with Chinese loans under Rajapaksa,
elder brother of Gotabaya Rajapaksa who was ousted from the presidency in July
after months of protests over Sri Lanka’s dire economic crisis.
The state-owned
Colombo Lotus Tower Management Company said they had decided to open its
observation deck to visitors from Thursday and earn ticket sales to minimize
losses.
“We can’t keep
this closed. The maintenance costs are huge,” chief executive Prasad
Samarasinghe told reporters. “We want to earn the upkeep of the building and
turn this into an entertainment center.”
The company hopes
to rent out office and shop space, including a revolving restaurant just below
the observation deck offering views of the congested capital as well as the
Indian Ocean.
Broadcasters say
the structure, which cannot cover the island nor improve current transmissions
from a mountain in the center of Sri Lanka, is of no use as a communications
tower.
A local media
outlet on Monday called it a “towering story of pride and waste,” a vanity
project of Rajapaksa who wanted a copy of
Beijing’s 405m Central Radio and TV
tower.
During his decade
in power from 2005–15, Mahinda Rajapaksa borrowed heavily from China for
infrastructure projects which failed including a deep-sea port handed to
Beijing in 2017 on a 99-year lease.
Sri Lanka’s
current economic crisis is partly blamed on Chinese debt which accounts for
over 10 percent of Colombo’s $51 billion in external borrowings.
Sri Lanka
defaulted on its debt in April and earlier this month agreed to a conditional
bailout of $2.9 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
It depends on the
Sri Lankan government striking a deal with creditors including China to
restructure its borrowings.
Beijing has so
far only offered additional loans instead of taking a cut on outstanding
borrowings.
China has loaned billions
for infrastructure projects in Asia, Africa and Europe under its gargantuan
Belt and Road Initiative, which critics say is saddling nations with debt.
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