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Colombo, Nov 1 (PTI) The Sri Lankan government has formally decided to initiate the process of divesting the ownership of the loss-making national carrier, SriLankan Airlines, to select investors, a cabinet note released on Tuesday said.<\/p>\n
During a cabinet meeting on Monday the decision to restructure the airline’s management was taken. A considerable number of shares would be handed over to select investors through a transparent procurement process, the note said.<\/p>\n
The State-Owned Enterprises Restructuring Unit has been given the task to study the methodology for the handover and make recommendations to the cabinet for the same, the note added.<\/p>\n
The Lankan government in August announced that it was looking to sell a 49 per cent stake in the catering and ground-handling units of the national carrier in order to restructure it.<\/p>\n
The government is now looking to hand over the management of the airline in addition to selling its shares, Aviation minister Nirmal Siripala de Silva said.<\/p>\n
President Ranil Wickremesinghe, also the finance minister, had stressed the need to restructure loss-making state enterprises.<\/p>\n
“I propose that the loss making SriLankan Airlines be privatised,” Wickremesinghe said in an address to the nation in May.<\/p>\n
In the 20\/21 year alone its loss was Rs 45 billion. By March 31, 2021, its total losses were Rs 372 billion.<\/p>\n
Even if the government privatised the airline the country will have to bear the loss, he said.<\/p>\n
“You should note that this loss has to be borne by the poorest of the poor who have not set foot in an aircraft,” the president said in May.<\/p>\n
Formed as Air Lanka in 1979, the management control of the airline was sold to the Emirates in 1998.<\/p>\n
The national carrier has accumulated a loss of Rs 372 billion since 2009 when the island nation’s government acquired back the management control from the Emirates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colombo, Nov 1 (PTI) The Sri Lankan government has formally decided to initiate the process of divesting the ownership of the loss-making national carrier, SriLankan Airlines, to select investors, a cabinet note released on Tuesday said. During a cabinet meeting on Monday the decision to restructure the airline’s management was taken. A considerable number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}