Port City Colombo: The great Chinese white elephant of Sri Lanka

The project is envisioned as a playground for the rich who would earn in dollars and keep all of it

Sri Lanka’s President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has a fetish for fiasco. The Indian Ocean island is a basket case for several reasons. Covid-19 decimated dollar earnings from tourism; the resulting increase in social spending ballooned public debt. Then came the war in Ukraine, worsening shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency. But the lion’s share of the blame must go to the strongman’s quixotic policies.
 

Rajapaksa has presided over the economy’s undoing: It began with an expensive tax cut soon after taking office in 2019; that was followed by an ill-conceived enthusiasm for organic farming, which destroyed production of both rice,