Property · Port City Guide

Part X of the Act applies the Condominium Management Authority Law and the Apartment Ownership Law inside the Area of Authority, subject to modification: section 54(2) substitutes the Commission for the Condominium Management Authority in the exercise of those powers, and substitutes the President, or the Minister to whom the subject is assigned, for the Minister. Regulations already in force under those laws continue to operate inside the Area of Authority until corresponding regulations are made under the Act — section 54(1).

Section 55(3) allows the Commission to require the Condominium Management Authority to maintain an office inside the Area of Authority, staffed by officers of sufficient seniority to ensure expeditious implementation.

The five-year obligation, stated accurately

Section 39 permits the Commission to lease Government Marketable Land or Project Company Marketable Land, or to lease or transfer on freehold a condominium parcel standing on such land, in Sri Lanka Rupees — but only to a person or company to whom the restrictions in the Land (Restrictions on Alienation) Act, No. 38 of 2014 do not apply. Where such a buyer pays in rupees and, within five years of that transaction, transfers, leases or rents the property to a third party for payment in a designated foreign currency, the buyer must remit the sum received to a Resident Foreign Currency Account maintained in Sri Lanka outside the Area of Authority, in its own name, as prescribed. It is a remittance and repatriation obligation. It is not a prohibition on resale, and describing it as a "five-year resale restriction" misstates both what is restricted and what is required.

Whether a particular buyer falls inside or outside the Land (Restrictions on Alienation) Act is the question on which the whole structure turns, and it is a question about the buyer, not about Port City. It is determined by the 2014 Act and its exemptions, and it is capable of changing during the life of a holding — for instance where foreign shareholding in a Sri Lankan corporate buyer moves across the fifty per cent threshold. It is a question about the buyer, to be answered on the buyer’s own facts and answered again if those facts move.