Recommencement date for the halted passenger ferry service between India and Sri Lanka is yet to be decided, The Daily Morning Business learnt.
Speaking to The Daily Morning Business recently, Minister of Ports, Shipping and Aviation Nimal Siripala de Silva said: “They (the Government of India) have promised but no improvement yet.”
Calling for Expressions of Interest (EoI) was opened for said ferry service in aspiration of the private sector investment to permit its recommencement as it was halted despite its commencement on 10 October 2023.
According to the subject Minister, the reason behind the halt was that The Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) Limited, an enterprise of the Government of India which manages the ferry service, has deployed a vessel for passenger transportation that is small with no other vessel to deploy.
Minister Nimal Siripala explained: “Once India brings us a ferry, we (Sri Lanka) can start the ferry service. Yet, they have not greenlighted anything on this.”
India Shipping News reported that Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Santhosh Jha, speaking at a forum titled ‘India: Reform, Perform, Transform’ on 5 March said: “In order for India’s ferry service to be profitable, it wants to go beyond a single point-to-point link and increase the number of times it runs with more than one provider. Adding multiple places to serve similar types of customers could be a common way to do this.”
This ferry service, in fact, spreads from KKS (Kankesanthurai in Jaffna, Sri Lanka) to Nagapattinam (in Tamil Nadu, India), covering around 60 nautical miles.
A similar service, the Indo-Ceylon Express that operated between the port city of Thoothukudi and Colombo through Chennai, was operated decades ago. However, it was stopped operating following the Sri Lankan internal conflict in 1982.
