• Delayed development could cost SL ports long-term gains to India
• Colombo Port volumes down, larger vessels diverted due to capacity issues

Sri Lanka will only have a short to medium-term advantage over Indian ports due to the anticipated 20% growth in container volumes, with India expected to become an $ 8 trillion economy in the next decade, according to Advantis Bunkering Chief Executive Officer Kushan De Silva.

Speaking in a webinar by First Capital, he said that with India planning to grow its economy at 7.5% in the next decade to convert its GDP to a $ 8 trillion economy, India expects a 20% growth in container volumes from a base of 20 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units).

He said that even with all the port development projects that India is talking about, there will be a lot of space for growth for Sri Lankan ports, to allocate the 3-4 million additional TEUs, where bunking, ship repairing and ship handling will have positive impacts.

But he said that due to the delayed implementation of the development projects in Sri Lanka ports, “there will be short to medium term advantage with the upcoming Indian ports unless otherwise, we start to add value and create more attractiveness in the port.”

Moreover, he said that in the last six months, Colombo Port saw a slight decline in throughput due to the constraint of capacity and some operational issues.

“We saw vessels moving to regional ports such as Krishnapatnam, Vallarpadam Port and Vizhingam, and even some vessels moved to Hambantota,” De Silva said.

According to Central Bank data, Transhipment Volumes at Colombo Port decreased by 2.7% year-on-year in the first five months of 2025 to 2.6 million TEUs.

De Silva said that larger vessels of 20,000 plus TEUs could not be accommodated in Colombo Port, and with the West Container Terminal (WTC) and East Container Terminal (ETC), that would be a game-changer to handle larger vessels.