A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Friday, April 28, 2017
China fear stalls India-Lanka deal
India
is in no hurry to complete the economic and technical cooperation
agreement (ETCA) with Sri Lanka. Officially, India has said it would
proceed "at a pace comfortable for Colombo". But there are other, bigger
reasons for India to guard its flanks while negotiating a second
generation free-trade agreement (FTA) with Sri Lanka.
China has evinced interest in an FTA with Sri Lanka as well. This has
given India pause, as it wants to see the details of that deal. This
could include, according to sources, Chinese companies setting up
manufacturing bases in Hambantota and Monaragala areas of Sri Lanka and
using the India-Lanka FTA to push Chinese goods into India. "We have to
be careful," said sources familiar with developments.
The ETCA has also run into trouble in Sri Lanka with some opposition
building up against it. India's nontariff barriers, bureaucratic delays
etc have not endeared it to Lankan business.
Chinese companies are apparently being given 15,000 hectares in
Hambantota, a fact former foreign minister G L Peiris told TOI in an
interview was nothing short of a "bad deal". If the deal had been done
the way former president Mahinda Rajapakse had intended, Peiris said,
Hambantota would have been a sustainable entity .
"There was no agreement to hand over 15,000 hectares to a Chinese
company .The agreement as structured at the time did not involve the
wholesale leasing of the port,but only a terminal of the port," Peiris
said.
Answering questions on the huge debt that Rajapakse left behind, Peiris
said, "Loans taken by this government is far in excess of what Rajapakse
had taken. There was something to show then -today there is nothing.
The government has admitted that the money to be paid by China for the
port ($1.4 billion) is not to be used for retiring this debt.So the
government argument of doing this (giving the land) to pay off the debt
doesn't stand."
Instead, India will focus more on infrastructure development in Sri
Lanka.New Delhi is working on projects in roads, railways, ports etc. In
this, Japan may prove to be a valuable ally for both India and Sri
Lanka. Japan will work with India on the Trincomalee port, while
Singapore is expected to help develop Trincomalee city .
Peiris said the payment scheme as set out by the Sirisena government is
unsustainable. "In the proposed agreement, the Chinese company will not
pay any money for the next 15 years.At the end of 15 years, the Sri
Lanka Ports Authority will get money from the Chinese company only if a
dividend is declared," he said.