India to Heavily Invest in Sri Lanka andI Facilitate Talks for Bailout from IMF: Indian HC Baglay
27th Jul, Chennai: Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has witnessed disruptions across sectors, even in terms of basic necessities. With India’s commitment towards its neighbours, under the Neighbourhood First Policy, New Delhi, since the start of this year has been assisting the island country in every possible way. India has already provided $4 billion economic assistance to Colombo, since January.
Indian High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka, Gopal Baglay said that going forward India will also be investing in newer sectors such as renewable energy, hydrocarbons, ports and infrastructure, and IT, through public and private firms. Apart from this, talks to sign the long pending Economic and Technology Co-operation Agreement between the two countries is also underway.
Baglay also mentioned India will be putting in efforts with the new gov ernment in Sri Lanka, on both at the functi onal as well as political levels, to facilitate talks for a bailout package by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Sri Lanka, which got stuck earlier as the situation there worsened.
Explaining how Indian investments will help Sri Lanka, Baglay said, “Sri Lanka is an economy having three main sour ces of revenue — exports, tourism and remittances. Due to Covid, some of these sources dried up comple tely. Sri Lanka is now trying to come back to normal levels of functioning and the economy will benefit from more investments. As a result, we are now looking at bringing in more investments in this country”
In line with this, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) is looking at establishing a solar power plant in Sampur in eastern Sri Lanka near Trincomalee, under a joint collaboration with the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). As per Baglay, India will also be heavily investing in the local manufacturing of pharmaceutical prodcuts, so as to help its domestic consumption and also earn forex by exporting such products.
With all this help being offered by India towards Sri Lanka, to assist the country come out of its economic crisis, is a reaffirmation of India’s Neighbourhood First Policy and how no matter what, New Delhi will always support its neighbouring countries in their development and growth.
