by Sanath Nanayakkare Local investors will get the pride of place to invest and operate the East Container Terminal (ECT) in the Port of Colombo, and the most credible proof for that is quite obvious as South Asia Gateway Terminals (SAGT), a Sri Lankan owned company is already operating a terminal single-handedly without any foreign stake in its business. General (Retd) Daya Ratnayake, SLPA chairman said yesterday. He said so responding to a question posed by the media whether the government is not too keen to hand over the operations of the controversial ECT to a local investor. “SAGT is a public private partnership container terminal in Sri Lanka, which provides a competitive best in-class service to the shipping community in the world, and any local investor can come forward and do exactly the same thing and gain from it,” he said.