China’s all-weather friends in SL and Pak are in deep economic crisis

The two countries are caught in the Chinese debt trap with Beijing demanding further concessions for rescheduling the debt like demanding that Colombo give permission for Oceanography in South Sri Lanka.

Published on: Apr 8, 2022, 10:35:53 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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While Pakistan Supreme Court has stabilized the political crisis in the Islamic Republic by restoring the National Assembly, the situation in Sri Lanka continues to be precarious with power, fuel, medicine scarcities sustaining the anger of the public and Islandwide protests including one on Thursday night outside the house of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. The Opposition JVP has given a three-day protest call in Colombo starting today.

Brothers in crisis : Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa with Pak Prime Minister Imran Niazi. (AFP)

Both neighbours of India are facing a serious economic crisis, with the dollar-local currency exchange rate plummeting by the day, foreign reserves heading for rock bottom and external debt mounting due to poor governance by Imran Khan Niazi in Pakistan and the Rajapaksas in Sri Lanka. The two countries are caught in the Chinese debt trap with Beijing demanding further concessions for rescheduling the debt like demanding that Colombo give permission for Oceanography in South Sri Lanka.

Despite Imran Niazi blaming the “foreign hand” for conspiring with the Opposition to throw his government out of power, the Supreme Court of Pakistan overturned the deputy speaker ruling of rejecting the no-confidence motion moved by the Opposition on ground of what appears to be a non-existent conspiracy. It is widely expected that Opposition no confidence against Niazi will carry through tomorrow in the National Assembly, leading to the formation of an interim government under whom the general election will be held.

While Imran Niazi is going to yet again address the nation to rave and rant on the US conspiracy against him in cahoots with the Opposition and the establishment, the outgoing PM has created a huge diplomatic mess for his successor by making unsubstantiated allegations against Washington, its principal aid donor for the past three decades. With the Pakistani Rupee close to a double century against a single dollar, it will be very difficult for Islamabad to secure funding from western financial institutions without showing good governance on the ground.

The situation in Sri Lanka is not so clear cut with the Opposition parties not having the political heft to displace the Rajapaksas Inc. soon. India, on its part, has decided to support the Sri Lankan public and will soon urge its private sector to invest in the Island nation to revive its economy with the Sri Lankan rupee scoring more than a triple century against a single American dollar.

Although the leadership of both the countries pitched their entire lot with Beijing much to the chagrin of the US and India, the economic recovery will be slow with accompanied political flux.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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