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ECONOMYNEXT – Adani Ports-controlled Colombo West Worldwide Terminal (CWIT) is a imaginative and prescient of the longer term. Its quayside cranes that transfer containers between ships and vans and yard cranes, which stack them up six excessive quickly, are operated remotely from its predominant constructing. Information from crane-mounted cameras and sensors are utilized by groups, together with younger girls not usually recognized to be employed as longshoremen, to manoeuvre containers between ships, vans and yards utilizing joysticks.

Indian Adani Port’s CWIT unit is rising at a document tempo, dealing with 1 million twenty-foot containers (TEUs) in only a yr since commencing and with simply eight quayside cranes, as civil works to finish the terminal proceed.

At full capability, Colombo’s latest and most technologically superior port terminal expects to make use of 250 individuals, up from 172 now. “We will then deal with 3.5 million containers a yr,” says Iresh Siriwardena, CWIT’s chief working officer.

With two different non-public sector-built and operated container terminals, SAGT and Chinese language-owned CICT, and three state-owned ones, Jaya, East Container Terminal, and Unity, Colombo dealt with 8.2 million containers in 2025, making it a world prime 25 seaport by quantity (Chart 1).

Document Container Quantity

Variety of twenty-foot equal containers dealt with (TEU, Mn)

It’s lengthy been contended by the state that Sri Lanka’s maritime business punches above its weight. Colombo port handles 0.8% of worldwide container site visitors, whereas Sri Lanka’s share of worldwide commerce is lower than a tenth of that, at 0.05%. Main hub seaports to the east and west of Sri Lanka; Dubai at (2.3%) and Singapore at (4.5%) deal with a a lot bigger share of containers (Chart 2).
Sri Lanka isn’t any manufacturing superpower, however it’s a main hub for transshipment.

Punching above its weight

Share of worldwide container site visitors and commerce

Shifting financial geography

Throughout the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, container seaport rankings had been dominated by the likes of Singapore, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, and Kobe. It was solely in 1996 that Colombo port’s container terminal, on the time, the state-controlled Jaya Container Terminal or JCT, achieved the 1 million TEU milestone. Japan funded JCT’s first part, which was accomplished in 1985.

China turned the world’s manufacturing facility in the course of the Nineteen Nineties, and the export success of East Asian Tiger economies led to development at ports like Singapore and Southeast Asian ones like these in Malaysia. The UN Commerce and Improvement Organisation ranked Sri Lanka twentieth globally for delivery connectivity in 2025, a location benefit that enabled Colombo’s rise because the mid Nineteen Nineties. Of the 8.2 million containers dealt with in 2025, 81% or 6.6 million bins had been transshipment or cargo that one ship drops off for an additional to select up.

This map of worldwide commerce has shifted as soon as once more. Asian provide chains are shifting away from China to new areas, together with in Southeast Asia and South Asia. For Sri Lanka, the rise in Indian freight is critical. Already, Indian containers are 45% of the cargo transhipped via Colombo.

Romesh David, former CEO of South Asia Gateway Terminals (SAGT), certainly one of six terminals at Colombo, suggests Sri Lanka is underestimating the dimensions of the Indian alternative. He remembers a remark made by Krishan Balendra, Chief Govt at John Keells Holdings: in 2024, Chinese language ports processed round 230 million containers, in opposition to simply 23 million for all of India’s seaports, regardless of India’s 1.4 billion individuals outnumbering China’s 1.2 billion.

India’s financial development will influence cargo in two methods. First, its rising inhabitants and their rising wealth will result in extra demand for imported items. Second, the nation is rising as a producing hub, thanks partially to commerce flows and its speedy plugging into advanced provide chains. Nevertheless, India’s containerised freight is just a tenth of China’s.

Up to now, Colombo port has piggybacked on India’s emergence as a producing hub and folks there are shopping for extra imported stuff.

Greater than 85% of India’s cargo is dealt with at Colombo, Singapore, and Malaysia’s Port Klang, with 45% of it dealt with on the Colombo Port.

India plans so as to add delivery and seaport infrastructure to fulfill not less than among the anticipated development. Sagarmala 2.0 strategic plan requires funding of US$82 billion in port tasks by 2035, and an extra US$139 billion in maritime investments on the identical time, in accordance with information from the Ministry of Ports, Delivery and Waterways.

Away from the mainland, India is planning a $9 billion hub at Galathea Bay within the Nicobar Islands, positioned close to one of many world’s most vital delivery routes.

India’s freight volumes grew at 5.2% yearly over the past decade. Nevertheless, India’s container freight volumes can rise 50% in 5 years and greater than double in a decade, ought to the nation’s worldwide commerce develop sooner than within the final decade to maintain a 8% annual development price (Chart 3).

Fifty million containers

Indian ports dealt with 23 million containers in 2025. Projected development within the subsequent decade, Million TEUs

Given the enmity, India is unlikely to permit a big quantity of its cargo to be transhipped on the Chinese language-owned Hambantota Worldwide Port (HIP), at Sri Lanka’s southern tip. In 2025, Hambantota dealt with simply 428,000 TEUs, and deliberate investments will develop capability to 2 million TEUs yearly.

David says 4 issues decide the success of a transshipment port: capability, effectivity, price, and placement. “Colombo is a transshipment port,” he says. “We have to flip ships round quick.”
At 8.2 million in 2025, Colombo is dealing with extra containers than ever. Nevertheless, its means to show ships round quick has declined relative to opponents.

Declining competitiveness

A broadly watched score, the World Financial institution’s Container Port Efficiency Index (CPPI), measuring how briskly vessels are rotated, reveals Colombo port has fallen to its lowest recorded stage because the measurement commenced. By the point the CPPI was first revealed (protecting 2020 information), Colombo statistically ranked seventeenth globally — the top-ranked port in South Asia.

In 2022, Colombo ranked twenty eighth out of 348 ports. By 2024, it ranked eightieth out of 403. The pool of assessed ports grew by 55 over these two years, and Colombo’s rank fell by an alarming 52 locations (Chart 4).
By container dealing with capability in 2024, Colombo was the twenty eighth largest seaport on the earth, however the World Financial institution’s CPPI measures solely effectivity, or how rapidly a ship may be rotated.

Colombo’s Slide
World Financial institution’s Container Port Efficiency Index (CPPI)

When JCT Section 1 opened in 1985, Colombo was not but within the world container port rankings. Its rise to a top-25 world port (by quantity) occurred progressively via the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s.

However past a sure scale, productiveness issues extra, as passing via seaports is dear, accounting for a giant chunk of products’ wholesale prices. Value-sensitive shippers will search out prime ports, in search of worth, pace and reliability.

Effectivity is at a premium within the competitors for world transshipment market share and berth productiveness – measured as strikes per hour of keyside gantry cranes. CICT and SAGT, Colombo’s non-public sector terminal operators, evaluate effectively in opposition to the world’s greatest.

Analysis revealed in 2024 by Charith H. Liyanaarachchi examined crane productiveness on vessel turnaround from 300 ships that berthed at JCT, SAGT and CICT. It discovered that crane productiveness at JCT averaged at 21 strikes an hour, SAGT at 30, and CICT at 35.

In February 2026, CWIT averaged 25 container strikes per hour, in accordance with Siriwardena, its COO. On one event, a single operator moved 84 containers in an hour. “We’re on observe to achieve 28 strikes per hour within the subsequent yr,” he says.

Automation or not, privately managed terminals are extra productive. “SAGT will not be automated to the identical stage as CWIT, however its 600 individuals deal with almost 2 million TEUs yearly, far above its 1.1 million design capability”, says CWIT’s Siriwardena. Previous to his function at CWIT, Siriwardena labored in a number of roles at SAGT for 25 years.

Potential at Sea

In August 2025, congestion on the Colombo port led to Mediterranean Delivery Firm (MSC), one of many world’s largest cargo delivery firms, rerouting its Himalayan Categorical service, a significant weekly cargo route connecting South Asia to world markets, via Vizhinjam seaport in India.

“Should you analyse the efficiency in 2025, we (Colombo seaport) may have dealt with 10 million TEUs,” suggests Siriwardena, “if not for the congestion.” Siriwardena suggests the hole between what Colombo dealt with and what it may have isn’t associated to capability, however an operations concern.

Romesh David led the John Keells group-controlled SAGT for eight years. Transshipment, he says, will not be a demand-led enterprise however a capacity-led one. “Seaports should have surplus capability for delivery strains to construct a community over your port,” he says. Delivery strains don’t make short-term bets; as a substitute, they assemble networks over years, typically a long time, on the again of understanding that the capability they require for the long run will exist. “If there may be uncertainty, restricted capability, and low productiveness, don’t count on them to construct a community round it.”

The world’s largest delivery strains, together with MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM and others, all preserve devoted workplaces right here. The chief govt officer of a world delivery line advised that they may route 15 new providers to Colombo if the seaport right here had enough capability. A service is a weekly delivery route. He provides that delivery strains, if Colombo makes quantity accessible, the port may entice as a lot as 30 million TEUs inside 5 years, “eyes closed.”

“The demand is there, however the infrastructure will not be,” says the worldwide delivery line’s CEO, who requested anonymity as he hadn’t obtained authorisation to talk to the media about points in Sri Lanka’s maritime sector.
Ships plying the east-west route are gigantic, so 15 new weekly providers by a significant delivery line isn’t any imply feat.

If every of these 15 providers deployed a 15,000 TEU vessel, which is kind of regular, theoretically, it might add a capability of 11.7 million TEUs. All 11 million containers won’t be offloaded at Colombo, however a number of million might be offloaded, and thousands and thousands of bins might be picked up by these providers.

In April 2025, MSC’s Mariella, a 400-meter-long vessel and the most important to go to Colombo’s seaport, arrived with a capability for twenty-four,244 TEUs. For scale, if MSC Mariella’s full load of 20-foot bins had been lined up one after the opposite, ranging from the Colombo seaport and alongside the Southern freeway, the road of containers would stretch 148 kilometres. That’s almost so far as Matara is from the Colombo seaport.

One answer is to make current seaports and their related logistics networks extra environment friendly somewhat than merely bigger. A comparability to Singapore, the world’s second-largest port by capability and one of the vital environment friendly on the earth, reveals there may be loads to achieve.

Singapore’s outdated port is definitely 4 dispersed container terminals and a separate bulk cargo port. For the needs of this comparability, the majority port has been left apart (Chart 5).

Terminal Rearrangement

Singapore ports land utilization versus Colombo port, 2025

Tanjong Pagar, Keppel and Brani Terminals, that are the oldest components of Singapore’s port, and visual from the left facet of the bridge main in the direction of Sentosa island, might be decommissioned in 2027 and enterprise transferred to a brand new facility for which Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) spent round $1.8bn on filling within the sea with earth. Known as the Tuas Port, its first stage is already partially operational.

The outdated terminals adjoining to Santosa Island deal with roughly as many freight containers as does Colombo’s seaport. Pasir Panjang Terminal, the fourth and the most important, dealt with 34 million TEUs, taking to 45 million the whole freight containers dealt with in Singapore in 2025. Singapore’s 4 older container terminals occupy 1,127 acres (Chart 5).

Colombo’s seaport occupies 1,160 acres, in flip dealing with 8.2 million TEUs, whereas Singapore has managed 45 million freight containers on 2,813 acres (together with Tuas stage 1). Colombo port’s actual property can be shared by the majority cargo terminal, shipbuilding and the Navy’s Western Fleet. Even when a beneficiant area allowance is made for this, the realestate utlization is is much better in Singapore. Singapore port (together with Tuas 1) is 2.4 instances bigger than Colombo, however handles 5.5 instances extra cargo.

When all 4 terminals at Tuas are operational by 2040, capability will prime 65 million TEUs, making it the world’s largest freight-container port. Nevertheless, it’s going to occupy solely 3,300 acres, being 3 times bigger than Colombo Port however dealing with eight instances extra freight containers. “That’s as a result of Singapore’s optimised turnaround instances are proper,” says the CEO of a world delivery company in Colombo.

Its pace, silly

A big port can deal with extra freight; nevertheless, it’s going to additionally amplify inefficiencies, run up in opposition to environmental obstacles and erode funding returns.

For additional positive factors, particularly within the extremely price-sensitive transshipment market, Colombo port must steer previous three obstructions: points with customs clearance, optimising using yard area and environment friendly inter-terminal trucking.

“All of the drama that we see within the press concerning the inefficiency of the port is round how poorly we deal with our gateway cargo, which is import cargo that’s cleared from the port and export cargo that comes into the port for cargo,” says David. Round 20% of the cargo dealt with on the Colombo port is so-called gateway cargo.
Sri Lanka Customs is the federal government company liable for controlling what enters and leaves the nation.
In 2025, a customs time-release examine confirmed the median launch time for a Full Container Load (FCL) import, for sea cargo, was 44 hours and 23 minutes, from the bodily arrival of cargo at customs till remaining clearance. An FCL cargo is for a single importer (Chart 6).

Sri Lanka’s Lower than Container Load (LCL) imports, the place a container holds items from a number of importers, take 77 hours and 54 minutes, or over three days to clear. Sri Lanka’s customs are open day-after-day, around the clock.

An identical time-release examine in 2020 by Singapore Customs confirmed a mean import dwell time of 24 minutes, together with time to approve a allow, to clear paperwork, and bodily transfer containers out of the port’s gate. Singapore’s course of has extra steps however takes much less time (Chart 6).

Time Examine
Time launch research for patrons’ clearance evaluating Singapore to Sri Lanka

The digital customs clearance platform ASYCUDA (Automated System for Customs Information), utilized by round 100 international locations, which logs declarations and assigns every a reference quantity, was developed by the United Nations within the Eighties to deliver customs processes into the digital age. It could make cargo clearance sooner, traceable and paperless, apart from the truth that its techniques are in battle with the Customs regulation, contended division’s officers.

Senior deputy director of imports Anusha Fonseka and Priyanthi Wijenayake, director of exports, say an importer should submit paperwork such because the Customs Declaration (CusDec) digitally via ASYCUDA and in addition bodily printed and handed to customs home brokers and border companies such because the Sri Lanka Requirements Establishment (SLSI) for clearance approval. Seven stations within the import and export course of require a printout of the already digitally submitted paperwork. Printing paperwork itself will not be the difficulty, however individuals should go to different individuals of their workplaces at hand over paperwork for every stage.

“There must be nearly no human interplay, significantly within the import and export clearance course of,” says David, pointing to what he sees as an pointless duplication of steps already accomplished digitally.

Sri Lanka Customs media spokesperson Chandana Punchihewa says, “Officers launch about 100 containers on some days by afternoon, on different days it may be simply 20 bins which have cleared. It relies on the officers and their mindset.” Punchihewa was appointed customs media spokesman in September 2025. He has spent 29 years at Sri Lanka Customs, having joined as an assistant superintendent.

Andre Fernando, the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Logistics and Freight Forwarders Affiliation, is all too accustomed to the challenges. He, like ships and delivery strains, factors to the success of ‘single window techniques’ or a digital platform which centralises importers, exporters, customs and all related border companies for the change of knowledge, submit funds, permits, declarations and clearances. No printing required. A paperless system would additionally cut back reliance on particular person officers.

Proposals for a ‘single window’ system in Sri Lanka are greater than a decade outdated. Sri Lanka ratified the World Commerce Organisation’s Commerce Facilitation Settlement in 2016, which requires member international locations to ascertain a single entry level for merchants to submit documentation and information to all related authorities. The settlement got here into power in 2017. Sri Lanka has not but delivered one.

ASYCUDA, the digital CusDec submission platform, is utilized by customs, but officers and different border companies nonetheless require printed copies of the identical paperwork submitted via the system.

The proof from elsewhere is difficult to disregard. A World Financial institution case examine revealed in 2013 (chart 7) confirmed that international locations which adopted a single window minimize common doc preparation time by six days and customs clearance time by two. That was over a decade in the past.

Single Window
Nations that implement a single window system pace up border processes

Nevertheless, throughout COVID, when shut contact may threat spreading the virus, CusDecs filed via ASYCUDA didn’t require printouts. “The agent who submits a CusDec will WhatsApp or SMS to the following officer with directions on processing, together with the distinctive ID quantity. That’s all we used,” says Punchihewa. WhatsApp, in impact, changed the printed copy.”

Quickly after the pandemic ended, printed supplies had been once more in demand. Sanath Manjula, chairman of the Container Transport Homeowners Affiliation, who represents truck house owners that provide vans to the port of Colombo, alleges “they reverted to guide processes as digital doc submission dangers eroding their unfair privileges.”

Subhashini Abeysinghe and Mathisha Arangala from the assume tank Verité Analysis, in a notice titled “Sri Lanka Falls Behind Least Developed Nations in Commerce Facilitation,” additionally argue that “profitable implementation of commerce facilitation reforms requires the power to beat resistance from border company officers that concern shedding the unfair privileges they’ve loved for many years from the present opaque, advanced, and guide processes.” Sri Lanka’s customs regulation was enacted in 1869, and it’s one of many oldest legal guidelines within the statute books. It grants a number of uncommon privileges to the customs division and its officers.

Punchihewa takes cowl behind the over 150-year-old customs ordinance, contending the regulation requires printed paperwork to be submitted. The Customs Ordinance Amedment of 1988 underneath clause 9C is specific he says: “The place a customs officer requires any bill and/or another paperwork to be produced for any items which have been imported, exported, entered for export or entered in transit, he might require such bill and/or doc to be submitted in unique and will require him to submit as many copies thereof as could also be obligatory for the needs of this Ordinance and he might retain such copies.”

“Because of the lack of authorized cowl, officers have resisted going totally digital,” Punchihewa says. He provides that the repair has been prepared for a while. “I’m a member of the Customs Ordinance Overview Committee, which drafted an to the regulation for a digital submission alone to be admissible. It was submitted to the Lawyer Basic’s Division, however nothing has come of it.”

Nevertheless, in March 2026, the Director Basic of Sri Lanka Customs, Seevali Arukgoda, mentioned container releases at examination yards exterior the port would transfer to a web based system. “Now we have launched this technique to make sure a clear and accountable course of, free from fraud and irregularities,” he mentioned.

Sooner border processes are essentially the most vital approach to enhance Colombo Port’s productiveness. Sooner clearing of cargo will even have the influence of liberating up yard area the place cargo should be saved till it’s cleared.

Yard area productiveness is the second main enchancment that may enhance port productiveness.

Complete 9 yards

Delays on the border management, together with customs, set off a sequence response throughout the port, the place infrastructure constraints deepen the dysfunction. A delay at customs snowballs via the port, filling yards and grinding vans to a halt.

For instance, an import that arrives on the terminal’s yard is positioned there after it’s taken off the ship. If labeled as medium or excessive threat, it’s transported to a yard exterior the port, the place customs and border company individuals look at the cargo. When inspection and, due to this fact, clearance delays happen, the inspection yards fill. Vehicles queue at inspection yards to unload new containers. Vehicles queue exterior terminal yards to ship containers sure for inspection. Unloading ships is delayed on account of congested yards, which should be stacked and restacked to create space.

Rohan Masakorala, chief govt of the Shippers’ Academy, a logistics coaching and advocacy physique, argues that the slowdown is especially acute on the import facet. The issue will not be customs alone. Three yards exist authorized for import inspection exterior the port: Rank Container Terminal yard (RCT), Grayline Yard 1 and Grayline Yard 2. “Limiting inspection to solely these yards is a restrictive coverage by the federal government,” he says. “When 1000’s of containers are discharged for every week, these yards lack enough area to deal with and discharge imports.”

Vehicles queue in every single place: at inspection yards, terminal yards and alongside the roads contained in the port.

The ensuing site visitors jams. Some vans await as much as ten days in queues and site visitors jams, says Manjula. Clogged terminal yards unfold the disruption to transshipment cargo, the port’s predominant enterprise. “Then these containers [imports] get caught within the terminal yards, which creates a sequence impact of transshipment containers additionally not having sufficient area within the port to deal with,” says Masakorala.

Inter-terminal trucking (ITT) is the method by which vans transfer containers between terminals for transshipment. It is a separate operation from the vans which might be used to maneuver import and export cargo out of and into the port.

Siriwardena says that issues are deteriorating as a result of greater quantity of transshipment cargo. “4 years in the past, SAGT dealt with roughly 56% of its transshipment cargo inside its personal terminal,” he says, which means a ship may drop off a container and one other ship would choose it up from the identical terminal. New terminals CICT and CWIT have led to adjustments in site visitors patterns. “Now there’s extra cargo shifting between terminals. So now SAGT hundreds roughly 34% of their transshipment cargo onto ships which might be at their terminal.”

Inside highway infrastructure connecting the terminal has not improved, and stay two lane highways. “Some work was commenced to widen inner highways by including two extra lanes, however that work has now stalled Siriwardena factors out.

In response to Manjula, vans shifting between terminals averaged underneath 24 hours between 2020 and 2024. In 2025, he says, it rose to round 36 hours. The trigger, he says, was authorities strain on customs to plug any income leaks, leading to extra inspections.

Singapore’s Maritime and Port Authority experiences a mean ship turnaround time of underneath 12 hours, protecting the complete operation: transshipment, imports and exports, from berth to departure. Though not the identical, in Colombo, it takes 36 hours to maneuver a container from one terminal to a different.

To enhance inter-terminal trucking, Fernando proposes changing the fleet completely. “You may automate the inter-terminal trucking to a rail system,” he says, arguing for an electrified rail loop connecting the six terminals.
Manjula provides that sensible gates at terminals and inspection yards, that scan and confirm digitally somewhat than requiring a bodily printed gate go to be handed to an officer, would take away guide bottlenecks within the system.

“Make them sensible gates, similar to how the freeway works, to scan rapidly,” he says.

The funding to do all of this isn’t the constraint. The SLPA income billions of rupees yearly (Chart 8).

Hub Port Impact
The SLPA income, Rs Bn

Colombo will not be one port. It’s two techniques sharing the identical waterfront, producing completely different outcomes.
“There are two sides to those port operations. The non-public terminals run among the best on the earth,” says Masakorala.

“We’d love to position all our cargo on the non-public terminals,” says a supply from one of many world’s largest delivery firms, “but when there is no such thing as a area, we now have no alternative however to go to a public terminal.”

Personal capital

The ocean-change at Colombo Port is a results of an vital coverage shift. Within the yr 2000, the federal government allowed the non-public sector to take part in constructing and working ports. On the identical time, it inspired public ones to maneuver to a “landlord mannequin”, with the port authority offering frequent providers akin to tugboats and pilots whereas leaving cargo operations to non-public corporations.

Personal capital funding public infrastructure is now known as Public-Personal Partnerships, or PPPs. Throughout the late nineties, when the SAGT deal was organized, PPP was not part of the nomenclature. Nevertheless, SAGT’s success — like with all nice PPPs — is because of it addressing a problem round infrastructure, tight fiscal area, rising demand and jobs.

When PPPs are structured effectively, infrastructure customers additionally profit from the innovation and effectivity that personal capital brings to the desk. Nevertheless, merely making use of non-public capital to infrastructure gaps isn’t assured to resolve issues. In actual fact, PPPs’ brief historical past can be plagued by examples of how some investments have didn’t stay as much as expectations.

The repair, in accordance with Masakorala, is structural. “Authorities is the owner, proprietor, operator and the regulator. That’s the greatest downside for this port.”

“Take away the port authority as proprietor, operator and the regulator,” he says. In 2017, he chaired the Nationwide Export Technique (NES), the place 150 senior business figures proposed a brand new delivery act, a brand new service provider delivery act and a transparent separation of logistics from ports and delivery. Nothing got here of it.

Opacity is one other downside. “We can’t do any evaluation [on performance] with the SLPA as a result of information is unavailable,” Masakorala provides. “You go to Singapore, they analyse all the pieces. The gate time is analysed, all the pieces is analysed. These are issues that can herald lowered prices [transparency will help develop better solutions].”
He’s not optimistic. “Sri Lanka goes to be simply one other port,” he says. “Not that dream mega maritime hub.”

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