Rajapaksa cautions government on signing Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement with India

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa has cautioned the government  on the proposed Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement with India and suggest it be presented to Parliament before it is signed.

In a statement issued yesterday and made availabel via his Twitter account, he said " Neither the Parliament, nor the general public have been officially informed about the contents of this proposed agreement."

He added that India has signed similar agreements with South Korea, Singapore and other countries but that they are detailed agreements.

The Full Statement is given below:

The government has indicated that they intend signing an Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement with India this month. Neither the Parliament, nor the general public have been officially informed about the contents of this proposed agreement. From the draft that has been unofficially released to professional associations by Minister Malik Samarawickrema, we gather that the proposed ETCA is not a detailed document but only a framework agreement which would leave the specific details on the trade in goods, trade in services and investment to be worked out later.

It is important that Sri Lanka should have a robust trade relationship with India. A trade agreement should be entered into only after a proper study of the possible problems and impediments that could arise. We must learn from our experiences with the 1998 Free Trade Agreement with India which ran into many problems in implementation. Issues such as ports of entry, product certification, mutual recognition of standards, Indian state laws governing trade and the caps imposed on certain export items from Sri Lanka all became issues that prevented Sri Lanka from achieving its full export potential to the Indian market.