Sapugaskanda to be sold to China to find money for presidential polls!
- Monday, 13 October 2014
The government has decided to handover the crude oil refining section of Sapugaskanda oil refinery to China’s Sinopect Engineering in order to find money for the upcoming presidential election.
Companies from several countries had put forward bids to secure the related tender, and the evaluation committee selected only four of them – Germany’s Marveg, Romania’s IPIP, Vantec of the US and Keangnam of South Korea. The tender application by China’s Sinopect Engineering was rejected by the evaluation committee in the first round as it had failed to furnish relevant documents.
Bids for the project put forward were 1,825.8 million US dollars by Marveg, 1,700 m USD by IPIP, between 1,300 m USD and 1,500 m USD by Vantec and 1,308 m USD by Keangnam. The evaluation committee gave 69 per cent marks to the German company, followed by 72 pc to the S. Korean company, 75 pc to the Romanian company and 81 pc to the US company, and recommended that the tender be given to the US company, which agreed to a price of 1,500 m USD.
Every company agreed for an eight year contract period, excepting Marveg which estimated it would take six years for completion of the project.
However, following the recent visit to Sri Lanka by Chinese president Xi Jingping, the president’s office unexpectedly ordered the petroleum ministry to grant the tender to the rejected Sinopect Engineering, disregarding the evaluation committee reports. The Chinese company has estimated the project at 2,200 m USD, to which the Sri Lankan government has given agreement.
Accordingly, documents and the cabinet papers are to be submitted this week to the cabinet to grant the tender to the Chinese company. The Chinese company has agreed to give a one pc commission to petroleum minister Anura Priyadarshana Yapa.
After getting to know about this commission, president’s son Namal Rajapaksa has expressed opposition and ordered Sinopect Engineering to provide the entire commission to be spent on propaganda activities of the presidential election. Anura Yapa is very angry with Namal for having denied his commission.
Namal has ordered the Chinese company to pay 10 pc of the money before December 01 to meet the presidential election propaganda costs.
