Sri Lanka and India have rushed to negotiate deals that will offer India greater access to Sri Lanka’s Trincomalee and Mannar regions, only days before Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa travels to New Delhi to secure Colombo’s request for a $1 billion credit line.
Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa would visit India next week, the Indian High Commission tweeted yesterday, a day after these deals were made, and that “his visit will consolidate existing efforts to further deepen India-Sri Lanka economic partnership.” The Finance Minister will travel to New Delhi to get a one-billion-dollar loan for emergency food, fuel, and medicine supplies.
One of the agreements inked in Colombo on Friday is a Joint Venture and Shareholders’ Agreement relating to the Trincomalee Power Company Ltd through which India’s National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Ltd and the Ceylon Electricity Board will develop a 100MW solar power plant at Sampur in Trincomalee.
The Ceylon Electricity Board also signed a MoU with Adani Green Energy Ltd to develop a 500MW wind power project in Mannar. Adani may carry out a feasibility study in the next few months with support from the Sustainable Energy Authority (SEA) and the CEB. The location is yet to be identified but it’s likely to be both onshore and offshore. In the medium to short-term, the Treasury, the Board of Investment (BOI), the CEB, the SEA and the Power Ministry will be involved. The investment is likely to be around US$500mn, authoritative sources said.
