Sri Lanka’s Cabinet of Ministers today approved a US$480 million grant from the United States government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The full statement issued by the Ministry of Finance reproduced below:

On a proposal made by the Minister of Finance  Mangala Samaraweera, the Cabinet of Ministers today approved the implementation of a US$ 480 Million MCC grant. This consists of grant funds for traffic management in Colombo, Road Construction Island wide, and land administration improvements covering the whole country.

These compact programmes to be funded by this project have been developed by the Sri Lankan officials of the line ministries and departments based on the needs of the country. The Sri Lankan Government has the option of amending the identified projects even after the signing of the Agreement.

Sri Lanka is the 37th recipient of such grant funds from the people of United States of America. The Minister of Finance will sign the agreement in the near future as it was confirmed by the Cabinet today, the implementation will begin in early 2020.

This is a great victory for the government and augurs well for the future. Sri Lanka began negotiation with MCC in 2001 at the direction of  Ranil Wickremesinghe, the then Prime Minister. MCC negotiations were led by the Ministry of Finance and the MCC compact developed and finalized by the Compact Development Team of the Prime Minister’s office.