Sri Lankan Finance Minister To Visit India This Month
Colombo/New Delhi, March 8: Sri Lankan Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa is scheduled to visit India in the second half of this month following a phone call with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.
The Indian High Commission in Sri Lanka, said in a tweet, that the two ministers had a productive and cordial phone conversation. EAM assured that India will continue to support Sri Lanka in all possible ways. “EAM @DrSJaishankar and Hon’ble Finance Minister @RealBRajapaksa had a productive and cordial telephone conversation a while ago.
“EAM assured that #India will continue to support #SriLanka in all possible ways. They agreed to finalize a mutually convenient date in the second half of this month for the visit of Hon’b @RealBRajapaksa to India”.
The announcement of the visit comes after a report in Sri Lankan newspaper The Sunday Times that India has called for an economic road map or action plan aimed at long term economic recovery and to “clear the decks for a long list of its economic cum strategic demands for implementation in the North and the East of Sri Lanka” in order to release a one billion US dollar emergency loan for essential supplies.
According to the Sunday Times report, the Indian demands involve a string of maritime security agreements that will strengthen India’s strategic interests, particularly around the eastern Trincomalee harbor.
These include Donier surveillance aircraft for the Sri Lanka Air Force, a ship repair dock for the Sri Lanka Navy in Trincomalee and posting of a Sri Lankan Navy officer at the Intelligence Fusion Centre, a Bahrain-based intelligence sharing office which is a US Navy initiative to combat international terrorism, the narcotics trade and ensure safe maritime passage for commercial vessels in the region.
It says one of the key pressure-points from the Indian Government is to start a renewable energy (solar power) project in and around Sampur near Trincomalee. The reopening of the Palay airport for commercial operations and several cultural projects in the Jaffna peninsula are also among items on the list already made public.
The Indian Government also wants to enter into the renewable energy field in the Delft islet after it scuttled a Chinese company securing the project following an Asian Development Bank ((ADB) tender procedure, it said. The one billion US dollar loan from India agreed to earlier in principle by the Indian Finance Ministry remains suspended for now, until guarantees are given from the Sri Lankan side, the paper said.
Jaishankar was earlier due in Colombo on March 18. The call between Jaishankar and Basil Rajapaksa came hours after Sri Lanka’s central bank said it is abandoning a 200 to the US dollar peg after printing money though multiple means which were making outflows greater than inflows, creating forex shortages and parallel exchange rates.
