Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said today everything was in place to begin the construction of the first phase of the Northern Expressway within a couple of days.

The minister said the construction was estimated to cost US$2.3 billion and that they had received the funds for the project.

“We have received the funds to begin the construction of the Northern Expressway. We will start work by next week. We have obtained permission to begin the construction of the expressway which is 54 km from Colombo to Kurunegala, 30 km from Kurunegala to Kandy and 29 km from Kandy to Dambulla,” he said.

The minister said the government was not prepared to allocate funds for fraudulent development projects initiated by the previous government.
He said the government would show that the development projects were back on track nullifying claims that development projects were at a standstill. (AjithSiriwardana and Chaturanga Pradeep)