Sri Lanka's India-backed unique ID card project likely to begin by Jan end

Sri Lanka's India-assisted unique ID card project will begin by the end of January, a senior official said on Tuesday, as he mitigated concerns that data from the project would be restricted to the island nation only.

The unique digital identity project, a crucial step in Sri Lanka's digitalisation programme, is being implemented with Indian grant assistance.

Some SLR 20 billion are needed to implement this project, we aim to receive 50 per cent of that under the Indian assistance programme, Digital Economy Deputy Minister Eranga Weeraratna told reporters here.

He said that the project will begin by the end of this month.

The previous cabinet of President Ranil Wickremesinghe approved the India-funded unique identity card project. India advanced Rs 450 million for the implementation of the project in August 2023.

The first phase of the project is to provide for the collection of biographic and biometric information including facial, iris and fingerprints, Weeraratna said.

He also addressed the concerns raised by opposition groups on the data privacy of Sri Lankan citizens and the protection of personal data.

These groups have labelled the project a national security threat, claiming that an Indian firm would have unrestricted access to all the data.

Weeraratna said the new National People's Power government would not allow this. He added that the government had already communicated to Indian partners that, once the mechanism is set up, access to the data should be restricted to Sri Lanka.

So there is nothing to fear, Weeraratna said.