JICA yet to grant final approval for Light Rail Transit project - Minister

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has not yet given the final go-ahead for the Light Rail Transit (LRT) project in Colombo, according to Vijitha Herath, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. During the weekly Cabinet press briefing on October 17, the Foreign Minister explained that JICA has told the government that any future decisions will only come after they assess the success of other ongoing projects. He mentioned that work on multimodal transport hubs is currently taking place. Although there have been talks about moving forward with the LRT project, JICA's final approval is still pending. Minister Vijitha Herath added, “JICA informed us that their next decision will rely on how well these ongoing projects progress. When we met with JICA officials in Japan, we shared all our proposals; however, they insisted that we first focus on the current projects before they can make a decision based on how those are going.”