His Excellency the President Mahinda Rajapaksa formally declared open the newly-expanded Colombo South harbor of the Colombo Port including its new Control Tower/Pilot station, Colombo International Container Terminals Ltd (first stage) for business on 5th August 2013. It will allow Sri Lanka to regain its role as a leading South Asia trans-shipment hub. The 56 meter high new Control Tower/Pilot station operates with the support of a home-grown Vessel Traffic Monitoring System (VTMS) which is developed as a project of the modeling and simulation group of the University of Colombo School of Computing.
