The lockdown and its aftermath are set to raise all sorts of issues for the construction industry that is already in trouble.

Hence, as the way forward for the industry, the Ceylon Institute of Builders appeal to the government to support the badly affected construction entrepreneurs and companies.

Firstly, the industry requests the government to release the long outstanding payments for the work completed by the construction companies.

“We need the government support to release some of the payments pose to the construction industry. Over a Rs. 100 billion needs to be paid to the contractors by the government and the private sector. So if you start paying them at least a portion then we can restart our projects and those companies can survive,” the Ceylon Institute of Builders President Dr. Rohan Karunaratne stressed.

Speaking further Dr. Karunaratne noted that the government should introduce a policy where a 30-40 % stake from foreign-funded projects should be shared with the local construction industry.

“So we can do a fair distribution of work to all these people,” he stated.

Karunaratne also harped that, once the country gets back to normal, the construction companies should restart the projects which were in the pipeline in order to revive the industry.

He also noted the importance of starting an infrastructure development fund.

“We should start it with small government funding and bank funding.The contractors will also contribute. We can also find very cheap funding sources for this fund. India is doing very well with their infrastructure development fund. So we should start this," he added.

The full speech can be viewed below: