- Monday, November 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
SRI LANKAN finance minister Basil Rajapaksa will pay a visit to India to meet prime minister Narendra Modi, the island-nation’s foreign minister GL Peiris said on Monday (22) in Colombo.
Speaking to mediapersons, Peiris said Pajapaksa will reach India in the next few days, adding that the itinerary is being worked out jointly with the Indian high commission in Sri Lanka.
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The visit assumes significance in the context of talks sought by Colombo for an Indian credit line to pay for the island-nation’s fuel purchases.
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Last week, Sri Lanka temporarily shut its only oil refinery for 50 days following unavailability of crude oil supplies due to its current foreign exchange crisis.
Peiris, however, said that Rajapaksa, who is the brother of Sri Lankan president Gotabaya Rajapaksa and prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, would not seek loans from India but enhancement of the neighbour’s investment.
“We have strong relations with India, not just focused on one area,” Peiris said, adding that Rajapaksa would call on Modi.
India has been generous with Sri Lanka’s calls for assistance whenever the need arose in the past, he said.
Rajapaksa is fresh from presenting his maiden budget – the 2022 budget which aims at raising taxes while anticipating more state revenue from stimulated cigarette and liquor retail prices.
The opposition has, however, accused the finance minister of having failed to find solutions to the foreign reserves problem faced by the country with the public being made to suffer scarcities of essentials.
Sri Lanka’s oil bill has jumped 41.5 per cent to $2 billion (£1.4 billion) in the first seven months of 2021, compared to last year.
The country is in the middle of a severe foreign exchange crisis after the pandemic hit the nation’s earnings from tourism and remittances, Rajapaksa said in September.
The island-nation’s gross domestic product has also contracted by a record 3.6 per cent in 2020 and its foreign exchange reserves plummeted by over a half in one year through July to just $2.8 billion (£2 billion). This has led to a nine per cent depreciation of the Sri Lankan rupee against the US dollar over the past one year, which has made imports dearer.
(With PTI inputs)
