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Hopes for strong economic ties with India
View(s):President Maithriapala Sirisena will leave for India today on a four-day visit leading a 16-member delegation in his first overseas visit after last month’s presidential election. Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne, Power and Energy Minister Champika Ranawaka and Resettlement Minister D.M. Swaminathan will accompany the President while Foreign Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera who is in the US will join the President in India.
President Sirisena will meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee tomorrow. He will also meet other political leaders.
The president is also scheduled to visit Buddha Gaya and the Tirupathi temple before he returns on Wednesday. Meanwhile, economists said the warming of relations between India and Sri Lanka with the advent of new leaders in the two countries after a prolonged period of suspicion and distrust, was the ideal platform to revisit stalled negotiations on a proposed economic and trade services agreement.
The visit for talks with Prime Minister Modi on key issues including the peace and reconciliation process in Sri Lanka, should also set the tone for fresh talks on trade and economic cooperation, they said. “(Prime Minister) Modi has an open mind and is very accommodating. This is the time to restart negotiations on the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) and also revisit the ongoing Free Trade Agreement (FTA),” a senior economist said.
He said the FTA had come to a stage of stagnation and like all trade pacts needed to be fine-tuned to keep in line with modern trends and global changes in trade and commerce.
R.D.S. Kumararatne, Director General of Commerce, said Sri Lanka, at the moment, would focus on the FTA as the CEPA had been stalled for some time.
Negotiations leading to a proposed agreement on the CEPA started during Ranil Wickremasinghe’s previous term as Prime Minister (2002-2004), which the economist said would be a positive factor in restarting talks on the proposed deal.
CEPA talks crashed during former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s 2004-2014 tenure owing to protests by local industrialists and other parties. They claimed the pact would open the doors for Indian professionals and semi-professionals to work in assigned sectors in Sri Lanka, thereby depriving locals of jobs.
These concerns were countered by trade experts and economists working on the Sri Lankan side saying such concerns would be addressed. However, the anti-CEPA lobby was so strong that it led to the former President putting the negotiations on the back burner.
Economists say the FTA also needs review and in both cases, FTA and CEPA, domestic concerns — restricting trade, investment and services in areas where Sri Lankans are building a base – could be addressed by the negative list. They said that uncertainty as to whether such concerns would be addressed in the negative list had deepened anxiety by local industrialists over the proposed pact.
“But all these concerns can be addressed now,” noted the senior economist, stressing that “India (under) Modi is very generous and reaching out to its neighbours unlike before”.