Sri Lanka is going to launch a $442 million wind power project, brought forth by the Adani group. It is the first major foreign investment for the country since it declared bankruptcy.
Adani Green Energy, belonging to the empire under businessman Gautum Adani will set up two wind farms in the north of the island, according to Sri Lanka’s Board of Investment.
The two plants will be supplying power to the national grid by 2025 and has a $442 million investment, according to a statement given by Sri Lanka’s BOI.
Sri Lanka has another project with the Adani group worth $700 million- a strategic port terminal project in Colombo launched in 2021.
The collaborative project was widely regarded as an effort to allay New Delhi's growing worries about China's growing influence in the area; the Adani firm had been chosen by the Indian government to serve as the contractor.
At Colombo Harbour, the only deep-sea container port between Dubai and Singapore, the company is constructing a 1.4-kilometer, 20-meter-deep jetty immediately adjacent to a Chinese-operated terminal.
Kanchana Wijesekera, the energy minister, reported that he met with Adani representatives on Wednesday in Colombo to finalise the wind farm deal.
By December 2024, "we anticipate the power plants to be operational," he stated.
The development follows a crash in which $120 billion in market capitalization for the Adani group was lost after a US investment firm last month accused companies in the group of accounting fraud and price manipulation. The group, however, disputes the charges.
In 2019, a Chinese company was given a $12 million contract from the Asian Development Bank to construct three wind farms on islands in the Palk Strait, which separates India and Sri Lanka. However, New Delhi objected to the proposal, and it was cancelled.
China accounts for 52% of bilateral credit and is Sri Lanka's largest government lender. For Colombo to receive a $2.9 billion rescue from the International Monetary Fund, Beijing must provide financial guarantees.
