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JLL Spark announces US$100 million global venture fund

Will invest in companies that aim to transform the real estate industry through technology; anticipates significant opportunities in Asia Pacific.

October 26, 2018

SRI LANKA HAS RELATIVELY GOOD ECONOMIC GROWTH, BEAUTIFUL BEACH AREAS, AND A ROBUST CONSTRUCTION SECTOR THAT IS DEVELOPING APPEALING NEW LUXURY HOMES AT VERY AFFORDABLE PRICE POINTS.

Along a stretch of coast in Sri Lanka’s capital, sand dredgers furiously spew jets of debris as they prepare the ground for one of the country’s most ambitious real estate projects to date.

Port City Development, a 269-hectare “futuristic city” costing USD1.4 billion, will be a shiny new mini-metropolis in Colombo, featuring financial and commercial districts, housing, a marina, and a Formula One racetrack.

The brainchild of a consortium of Chinese companies led by state-run China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd (CHEC), the project is another impressive example of how new cities, bridges and roads are growing out of nothing in countries where China is pouring money to realise its Belt and Road economic dream.

“Colombo Port City is a key project in South Asia under the Belt and Road Initiative and it has well matched Sri Lanka's Western Megapolis development strategy,” Chairman Liu Qitao of China Communications Construction Company Limited, the parent company of CHEC, told Xinhua.

China has been committed to rebuilding infrastructure in Sri Lanka since the island’s decades-long ethnic war ended in 2009. But with China’s economic and geopolitical future riding on the success of its Belt and Road plan, set to link its land and sea trade routes to Africa, Europe and the rest of the world, money is flowing thicker and faster into Sri Lanka and the rest of Asia.