‘Talking to India how to avoid Chinese ship like incidents,’ Milinda Moragoda, Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India

New Delhi: A few months back a Chinese vessel docked at Hambantota in
Colombo in Sr Lanka. Going against India’s interest, New Delhi made it vocal
enough to Colombo.  The ship was said to
be tracking ship that had clandestine interests in the maritime borders.  Why did Sr Lanka give access to the Chinese
ship at the first place and did Sri Lanka undermined India’s security concerns?

Giving an inside peek into Sri Lankan affairs, Sri Lankan High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda
said, ‘We are talking to India how to avoid such incidents in future. How do we
have better & transparent communication & develop some kind of a
framework to avoid such issues.’ He said, ‘lot of technologies today are dual
purpose technologies. They can be used for peace and war & we may not be familiar
with them. So we need to have a better understanding. But for us India is the
anchor for security. No disputes about that. ‘

Chinese ship docking 

Informing about the background Milinda said, ‘Approval for
this was granted at the time when we were in the state of chaos on ground.
Having granted it there was an issue doing anything after that. Lesson learnt
is that we need to have very close coordination & cooperation with India.
We are working on a framework of operation. There was no intention of working
against India’s security interests. He said, ‘It has been our basic foreign
policy as India’s security interests are our own security interests. India is family, China a friend.

‘In 1987
the accord that was signed had mentioned that India would not allow Indian soil
to be used against Sri Lanka & similarly Sri Lanka will not allow maritime borders
to be used against India. It a matter of how we implement it and how we engage.
Some time ago we had a similar understanding for a submarine that came from China
in 2014. It a process. We have to learn that it doesn’t happen again. Such
things are done in a routine level unless something stark comes up. The
permission was given when our former President was about to leave. There was no
political involvement in this decision. We have had over 300 naval ship visits
to Sri Lanka from India, also from US navies & a large number of research
vessels from China as well. Most of them come to Colombo, Hambantota.’

Economic resurgence

India has last year extended an assistance of $4 billion
to the island nation to come out of its economic mess. Thanking India for its
support he said, ‘India is the anchor of security in this region. Without India
we will not have been able to last this far.’ said the Sri Lankan Ambassador
Milinda Moragoda. ‘We see our resurgence as a 2 steps way to recovery. ‘Stabilization
and then revival phase in which India will play a key role. Revival will come
through investments, market access & looking at new areas for integration,
he said. ‘Only way we can turn this around is growth & India is a key
component of that.’

Economic crisis, what went wrong

On what went wrong in Sri Lanka to lead to the present crisis, he
said, ‘We invested heavily in the social sector. Education health, someway at
the cost of economy. Didn’t invests in growth. Presently we spend 80 % of our
revenue on salaries & pensions for our state sector employees in a
population of 20 million. 74% spent on interest payment alone for our debt. So
we begin every year borrowing & in dollars. Our enterprises are losing
money as we are losing on electricity, on petroleum. Whatever comes in gets
stuck in our banking sector. Covid & Ukraine crisis brought all this to
fore. It was a problem that was waiting to happen.’

Certain lessons to be learnt from the uprising are he
said, ‘Our youth feels that our economies haven’t been delivering for them. We
have to find ways for growth & employment. With India its more of a
strategic & economic relationship than transactional.  We have to fall to India to grow.’

Ports, Investment & Tourism

Talking about the broad partnership between India and Sri
Lanka he said, ‘India and Sri Lanka are collaborating in many spheres like electricity
cable link connecting Sri Lanka with India, on Trincomalee as an energy hub and a
refinery, investments in ports. Trincomalee oil tank farm is now being jointly
managed by Sri Lanka & India. That cud potentially be in link with the pipeline with
India for oil supply and a logistic centre.’

He further informed ‘Colombo port is largely a port
servicing India. Adani ports have invested & that work will start in coming
weeks. Whether it is fresh investment or buying existing businesses in Sri Lanka
or developing or expanding them, focus will be on economic integration.’

What is Sri Lanka doing on the trade front, he informed, ‘We
are working on making connectivity better. Flights to Jaffna are starting as
well as more connectivity from other Indian cities too. We must think of out of
the box ideas. Tourism is the quickest way to start. ITC is building the first
star class hotel. Spending about 400 million dollars opening next yr.
Integrated gaming resort coming up. Wedding & event tourism happening. We
are working on Comprehensive Economic Partnership.  In IT India is playing a key role. HCL is
investing in Sri Lanka as well as TATA and Infosys. There is potential for renewable
wind & solar energy in northwest of SL. Like, Tourism is the low hanging
fruit. Before covid, India contributed 20-25% tourists. India is our main
market for tourism.

Political mess

Talking about the political mess in his country, Milinda
said, ‘The blowback we saw in the last few days was because people felt
politicians were looking after themselves more than the people & nothing
coming to the ground. One of the reason for corruption in SL is the voting
system which needs to be corrected. We have a very convoluted voting system
which requires millions & millions of rupees to even contest a local seat.
So a change is being worked out a the provincial council level for voting.’

Chinese aid 

How much aid from China are you getting? 10% of our debt
is Chinese. We are looking at structuring it. Discussion for stabilization with
Chinese and some more countries is going on. Our President is visiting Japan.

Oh, the fishermen

On Fishermen issue, he said, ‘We have to find a solution
to this complex problem. There are 3 elements to it. Legal side, law is clear
on this. Ecological side, if the fishing belts on our sides gets denuded they
will lose the fish. Environmentally over fishing can be a problem. Then
Livelihood issue is very important. We have to ensure to work together on
livelihood. Tamil Nadu fishermen are using much bigger trawlers so fish beds
have problem. Discussions on trying to encourage deep sea fishing.

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