Sri Lankan foreign minister GL Peiris’ visit to India from Sunday will be an opportunity to expand bilateral cooperation at a time when ties are on the upswing after taking a hit last year over Colombo’s sudden scrapping of an infrastructure project.
Peiris, an old India hand, is set to hold talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar, during the three-day visit, his first bilateral foreign trip since he returned to the foreign ministry last year. He is also expected
Sri Lankan foreign minister GL Peiris’ visit to India from Sunday will be an opportunity to expand bilateral cooperation at a time when ties are on the upswing after taking a hit last year over Colombo’s sudden scrapping of an infrastructure project.
Peiris, an old India hand, is set to hold talks with his Indian counterpart S Jaishankar, during the three-day visit, his first bilateral foreign trip since he returned to the foreign ministry last year. He is also expected to meet National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Since the beginning of the year, India has taken several steps to help Sri Lanka tide over a deepening debt crisis that left the country struggling to pay for food and energy imports. Ties also got a boost from the finalisation of a deal on the long-gestating project to refurbish and develop the Trincomalee oil farm, a storage facility with a capacity of almost one million tonnes.
Besides providing a $500-million line of credit this week for purchasing petroleum products, India has extended a currency swap of $400 million under the Saarc facility and deferred the payment of $500 million that Sri Lanka owed to the Asian Clearing Union. The two sides are working on a $1-billion credit facility for emergency purchases of food, medicines and essential items by Sri Lanka. India also allocated ₹200 crore as aid for Sri Lanka in its budget for 2022-23.
The Sri Lankan side will be keen on exploring further options under a four-pillar package for short and medium-term cooperation that was discussed during Sri Lankan finance minister Basil Rajapaksa’s visit to New Delhi in December. This includes facilitating Indian investments in different sectors in Sri Lanka.
Pieris is also expected to seek India’s support ahead of the presentation of a report on the human rights situation in Sri Lanka at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva later this month, people familiar with the matter said.
The Indian side is expected to air several issues that are important to New Delhi, including the detention of fishermen from Tamil Nadu by Sri Lanka’s security forces and China’s efforts to bolster its presence in the island nation. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s comments during a recent visit to Sri Lanka — that no “third party” should interfere in China-Sri Lanka relations — and his proposal for the creation of a forum of Indian Ocean island nations were seen in New Delhi as an attempt to curtail India’s role in its own neighbourhood.
Ties between New Delhi and Colombo were hit early in 2021 when Sri Lanka abruptly scrapped a 2019 deal with India and Japan to operate the East Container Terminal at the strategic Colombo port. In October last year, state-owned Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) inked a deal with India’s Adani Group to develop and run the Colombo port’s West Container Terminal – widely seen as a move to balance the fallout of the cancellation of the earlier pact.
The economic assistance from India and contacts between senior ministers of the two countries in recent weeks have helped restore bilateral ties to an even keel.
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