Colombo: Cash-strapped Sri Lanka on Thursday announced its first major foreign investment since it declared bankruptcy, approving a $442 million wind power project by India’s scandal-hit Adani group.
Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment said Adani Green Energy, part of the business empire of Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, will set up two wind farms in the island’s north.
The total investment will reach $442 million and the two plants will be supplying power to the national grid “by 2025”, the BOI said in a statement.
The project comes after Sri Lanka awarded Adani a $700 million strategic port terminal project in Colombo in 2021.
The firm is building a 1.4-km, 20-metre deep jetty right next to a Chinese-operated terminal at Colombo harbour, the only deep-sea container port between Dubai and Singapore.
Energy minister Kanchana Wijesekera said he met with Adani officials in Colombo on Wednesday to finalise the wind farm project.
“We expect the power plants to be commissioned by December 2024,” he said.
The development comes after a US investment firm last month accused Adani’s companies of accounting fraud and price manipulation, triggering a rout that saw $120 billion wiped off the group’s market capitalisation. Adani denies the allegations.
