Sri Lankan High Commissioner in India Dr Milinda Moragoda today disclosed that his country had floated a proposal to the Indian government to lay an Oil & Gas pipeline through Trincomalee and claimed it had received favourable response from the leadership of the country.
Speaking to foreign correspondents here this evening at the Foreign Correspondents Club of South Asia (FCC), Dr Moragoda, who has previously held several ministerial portfolios in the Lankan cabinet , said such a pipeline would help his country’s economic growth to receive petroleum products ranging from petrol, diesel, lubricants etc which it had to import at prohibitive costs.
Thanking the Indian government under PM Narendra Modi for the extraordinary support it had extended at the dark hour in his country of an unprecedented economic crisis, he said his country was thankful for the $1.6 billion credit it was extending to resurrect the island nation’s shattered economy. On the economic crisis, he said the external debt was about $15 billion of which India was due to get $1.6 billion, $2.6 billion to the Paris Club of European nations and a huge chunk to China.
China has also extended a $1.6 billion credit line but nothing concrete had been achieved so far , but negotiations were on , he said.
On the controversy if the businessman Gautam Adani was favored to construct a multipurpose port in Sri Lanka, Dr Moragoda said, “he was among the first to arrive with a concrete proposal to construct the port. There is no politics in this. It’s purely an investment decision the government of Sri Lanka made. We are not competent to comment on the businessmen relations with the government in India. As far as Srilanka is concerned, we welcome investment decisions. “ The project is on and will be completed, he said.
The Adanis are also the first to arrive in Israel and they are going to construct the Haifa port, he pointed.
When it comes to geo-politics interests conflicting with geo-economic interests, every nation will choose the latter for economic development. He said as far as Sri Lanka was concerned it realized its geo-political situation and its proximity to India and knows its security concerns are best served by India than any other country.