The Hon. (Dr.) Nishantha Samaraweera

¶ 01 REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ENTERPRISES

¶ 02 Hon. Speaker, with the special permission of the House, I present the 17th Report of the Committee on Public Enterprises for the First Session of the Tenth Parliament, in Sinhala only. English and Tamil versions will be presented as soon as possible.

¶ 03 By way of clarification, this Report is based on the findings of our inquiry into the National Savings Bank (NSB), established under the National Savings Bank Act, No. 30 of 1971. As at 30th September 2025, in respect of loans exceeding Rs. 5 million, total recoverable outstanding was Rs. 96,046 million, of which Rs. 7,972 million were classified as non-performing.

¶ 04 We examined four large non-performing loans: - US$ 9 million to RPI (Pvt.) Ltd., a Maldives-registered company, as part of a syndicated loan with People’s Bank; - Rs. 750 million to Technopark Development Company; - Rs. 200 million (2016) and Rs. 100 million (2019) to Bimputh Finance PLC, a microfinance company, on a corporate guarantee by Daya Group of Companies.

¶ 05 In February 2025, the Colombo Commercial High Court issued a liquidation order to wind up Bimputh Finance PLC in a case filed by HDFC Bank over defaults exceeding Rs. 350 million. NSB failed to act promptly during the winding-up process to recover principal and interest. Ultimately, the company was wound up with over Rs. 258 million still outstanding to be paid.

¶ 06 Regarding RPI (Pvt.) Ltd., in June 2018 NSB extended a US$ 9 million facility (alongside US$ 1 million by People’s Bank) via a syndicated structure since NSB lacked mandate to lend directly to a foreign company. No principal repayments were made; the exposure grew to US$ 14.73 million with repeated grace-period extensions, yet no effective recovery plan. The promised Maldivian resort villa project showed zero per cent physical progress in the “water villa” component at the time of lending. Numerous such issues were observed. We recommend urgent follow-up and corrective action as detailed in the Report.