As President Mahinda Rajapaksa cuts the ribbon to open Sri Lanka’s second international airport today, he will hail a project that displays his country as modern, strife-free and open for business.
Sri Lanka’s government hopes the $209m Mattala Rajapaksa International airport in the island’s south-east will soon see visitors whisked off to nearby beaches, accelerating a tourist boom that is helping it leave behind two decades of civil war.
Yet, seen from Washington or New Delhi, the opening of the airport causes concern, it being the latest in a series of grand infrastructure projects in the south Asian nation built by Chinese construction companies, and financed with billions of dollars of loans from Chinese state-run banks.
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