Sri Lanka looks to restore war zone property

Sri Lanka is to bring in special property laws to protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the island’s Tamil separatist war, a justice ministry official said yesterday.

The measure could see absentee owners, or their heirs, looking to reverse decades of possession by other people in both the conflict-wracked north and east of the country and elsewhere.

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(Source: FMT)

100% land sale tax for foreigners to be scrapped

Sri Lanka will scrap the 100% tax on foreigners buying land, to promote foreign investment and tourism. The Government instead plans to introduce a special land tax in the 2012 budget removing existing barriers in the sale of land to foreigners and foreign companies to develop land in any part of the country. This will bring more revenue to government coffers, Finance Ministry sources said. The new land tax, the amount of which is yet to be finalised, is aimed at preventing the sale of land at inflated prices to foreign buyers, making huge profits completely tax free and thereby cheating the government of revenue while also breaking immigration laws. Whenever there’s a prohibitive tax in place, foreign investors find a way around it and Sri Lanka is no exception, a senior official of the Finance Ministry, said More>>  (Source: Sunday Times)

Revised Galle Face deal offered to Chinese firm

Outright purchase changed to 99-year lease, but questions over CATIC’s acceptance

The Cabinet has now given approval for a 99-year lease of seven acres of prime land near Galle Face Green to China National Aero Technology and Export Corporation (CATIC). This is after reversing an earlier decision for the outright sale of the land for around US dollars 125 million (or about Rs 13.7 billion). It is not immediately clear whether CATIC — China’s aircraft manufacturing and marketing firm — would accept the offer or demand that its money be refunded. CATIC is learnt to have already remitted to the Treasury the amount involved. More>> (Source: Sunday Times)

CID probes big frauds in house and property deals

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) has assigned a team to track down racketeers behind illegal house or land transactions, a senior officer said. The probe comes on a directive from Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa amidst an increasing number of complaints, some of which he had received personally.

The CID will probe cases of persons illegally acquiring houses on forged documents, cases of driving out the owners by force, extorting money from owners of houses and cases of selling or mortgaging lands owned by others, the officer said.

Among the victims have been persons who have migrated few years ago and returned recently.
Complaints could be made by calling 011-2320141 -5. Fax – 0112380380.


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(Source: Sunday Times)

Chinese assistance for a new housing project in Sri Lanka

July 15, Colombo: Sri Lankan and Chinese Governments today signed an agreement to construct urban housing project of 130,000 units in selected areas of Colombo and its suburbs.

The agreement for this project worth of 1.2 billion rupees was signed this morning at the Ministry of Constructing and Engineering Services.

Construction and Engineering Services Minister, Dr. Rajitha Senaratna and Liu Wei, the Deputy Chairman of the Chinese International Economic and Technical Cooperative Agency signed the agreement on behalf of the two governments.

The houses are to be constructed at Dematagoda, Panchikawaththa, Ragama and Keppitipola Mawatha in Colombo.

Minister Senarathna told the media that the housing project would be completed on two years.

Source: Colombopage.com

Sri Lankan real estate company hit by falling prices

COLOMBO, Jun 1, 2009 (Asia In Focus via COMTEX) -- EQY | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The real estate arm of Sri Lanka's CARSONS CUMBERBATCH group said it was writing down the values of properties by 450.3 million rupees (US$3.9 million) as the prices slumped in the wake of tight monetary policy. "This year has been a challenging year where we saw a significant market correction on the property prices as a result of tighter credit conditions and a change in investor and customer attitude on real estate," EQUITY ONE LTD, a Carsons property firm said in a statement. 

* "The property values have reflected changes in interest rates and risk.

* "Unrest in the financial markets and uncertainty in the wider economy have added to the crisis of the property market."

For full details on Equity One Inc (EQY) click here. Equity One Inc (EQY) has Short Term PowerRatings of 3. Details on Equity One Inc (EQY) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.

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