Sri Lanka to open second Chinese funded highway

Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa will open the country's second highway built with Chinese funding this weekend ahead of a crucial Commonwealth summit, the President's Office said on Thursday.

President's Office confirmed to Xinhua that President Rajapaksa will declare the highway open on Sunday morning amidst much celebrating. The new expressway will cut travel time from the airport to the capital's outer limits to less than 20 minutes.

The highway has been opened to the public since Tuesday allowing large numbers of youth and school children to stroll along the empty tarmac.

Several events have been organized in the run up to the opening including bicycle races and concerts. For the first time in Sri Lanka an elephant race was also staged near the starting point of the highway as the ruling party looks to get the most publicity out of the 292 million U.S. dollar highway.

The highway is funded by the Chinese government through a loan from the China Export Import Bank (EXIM). It was begun in August 2009 and was expected to be opened in July 2013.

However despite delays the government was determined that it should be opened ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) hosted by Sri Lanka next month.

Most of the heads of State from the 53 Commonwealth countries will now use this highway to reach Colombo for the most important summit of the bloc to be held in Sri Lanka on Nov. 10-17.

Since Sri Lanka ended a 30 year war in 2009, China emerged as the island's largest loan provider with 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in loans in 2009 and 821 million U.S. dollars in 2010.

In 2011 the amount fell to 784.7 million U.S. dollars, but China remains involved in almost all the large scale projects taking place, according to the Finance Ministry.

Some of the biggest projects include a 1.3 billion U.S. dollar coal power plant on the north western shore as well as a host of other investments in the south of the country that are estimated to exceed 4 billion U.S. dollars, including a 1.2 billion dollar harbor.

China was also one of the funders for the Southern expressway, which was Sri Lanka's first highway declared open in 2011.