JICA agrees $1.7bn Colombo Light Rail Transit project loan

JICA is to provide a $1.7 billion soft loan - a 40-year facility inclusive of 12-year grace period that is priced at 0.1% - to fund construction of the proposed fully elevated Light Rail Transit system in Colombo. The project's construction is divided into seven phases, with phase 1 encompassing the construction of part of RTS 1 (Fort to Union Place) and RTS 5 (Battaramulla to Malabe), along with the entirety of RTS 4 (scheduled to begin in late 2018/early 2019), and phases two through to seven expanding the network throughout the planned Western Region Megapolis. The total cost of the project for the seven phases is about $6 billion.