Sri Lanka will soon reap multiple benefits from the Singapore-Sri Lanka FTA as it was carefully drafted to give optimum benefits to Sri Lanka, State Minister of Finance and Mass Media, Eran Wickramaratne said yesterday.
He told a business interactive session in Colombo that Sri Lanka will also have an FTA with China and Bangladesh and will also fine tune the current FTA with India in the near future. The participants of this interactive session included an 18-member business delegation from China organized by the ‘Belt & Road International Production Capacity Cooperation Promotion Centre’, Beijing.
Minister said that Sri Lanka has come out from a shaky economic situation to a stable economic situation. The economic growth is now stable and a growth rate of 4% has been recorded.
“Several key infrastructure projects are now being implemented and the much-awaited East Container terminal at the Colombo harbour too would soon take off.”
He also said that Sri Lanka had a record FDI last year and China was a major contributor for it.
Meanwhile former President Non-Ferrous Metals Industry and Senior Advisor of BRI promotion centre, Kang Yi said that China has already invested over USS 7.7 billion for the belt and Road initiative (BRI).
He said that BRI has so far crated over 235,000 new employment opportunities. The BRI has also invested to link nations together by road and sea in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and 14 countries. “In additions heavy investments are made on Railways and the BRI train is now touching 7 countries in Europe and Russia.”
He said that the BRI has also included Sri Lanka as one of their countries and this will bring huge benefits to Sri Lanka as the island is located in the main route of BRI. Chinese Prime Minister Xi Jinping visited Sri Lanka while President Maithripala Sirisena visited China cementing the long standing relationship of the two countries.
The Chinese managed Hambantota Port is investing for the development of the harbor while work on the Logistic Park of Hambantota harbor area too has commenced along with 80 similar economic zones that were created after the launch of BRI.
He said that from the belt and road initiative, Sri Lanka too would benefit and already over 100 countries including Sri Lanka are involved in it.
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