SriLankan Airlines bidders narrowed from 8 to 1

The number of bidders for a stake in the national carrier has been narrowed down to one, revealed Deputy Minister of State Enterprise Development Eran Wickramaratne, without disclosing the name of the buyer.

“We’ve been through an open, transparent process and we have now got down from eight to just one player. And the player is a private equity company. There are advantages in that company, and we will therefore talk with that company, but that also gives the Government the liberty to talk to other airlines directly and to see what is the best fit for the country,” he explained at an event titled ‘Prime Minister Speaks’ yesterday.

SriLankan Airlines has been mired in controversy ever since the controversial Weliamuna Report accused several top officials of financial misappropriation and other misconduct. Wickramaratne, who noted that SriLankan Airlines had accumulated losses amounting to approximately Rs. 140 billion, also dismissed a line of questioning that centered around the carrier, a national asset, being sold.

“We are not caught in this idea of who owns it. We are really caught in the economic idea of what is the benefit to the citizen. When we go to Hambantota and talk about the port, the impression is created that we’re selling a national asset. I think we need to leave that language behind when you’re talking about economics. We should look at returns, and returns to the public.

“So we are open, whether it’s owned by the private sector in this country, whether it’s owned by the public sector, whether it’s a public-private partnership (PPP), each institution and each industry and business needs to be looked at separately. We can’t be guided by some outdated theory here.”