Starter Kit. Idea 485 of 500. Cluster 26
Hambantota: an industrial estate for the processors in this list
The mechanism, from the book
Every city has one thing it could be known for, and each is currently known for nothing in particular.
The first step
Choose 3 processing ideas from this list that need land near a port, such as spice, coconut or mineral processing, and ask small firms already doing them elsewhere on the island whether they would move or expand to a shared estate. Note what each needs: power, water, a shipping rate. Written expressions of interest from all 3 are the case you take to the port's land managers.
- Who pays first
- A small processor already exporting from the island, who would pay rent for serviced land beside a port to cut the cost of moving goods to Colombo.
- What leaves today
- Raw goods leave the island unprocessed while the port's land stands empty, and an estate of processors turns that land into value added before shipping.
Ask first
- Board of Investment of Sri Lanka. Ask what an estate for small processors near the port would need to be approved.
- Central Environmental Authority. Ask what environmental approval processing on a shared site would need.
Check before you spend
Confirm the land's use and lease terms, environmental approval for each process, and power and water supply before any firm signs.
Find out these three numbers
- How many small processors would move or expand to the site?
- What rent per unit would they pay?
- What would it cost them to ship through the port?
A comparison from the book
Mauritius. Chapter Ten
"It built the new economy alongside the old one instead of demanding that the old one be shut down first."
Start the new processors beside what exists. Nobody has to lose first.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.