India tells Sri Lanka to honour pact after Colombo takes back port contract

[NeonNinja]

India said on Tuesday it expected Sri Lanka to honour its agreement to allow it to operate a major port terminal following Colombo's decision to pull out of the deal.

The East terminal of Colombo port will be 100% owned and operated by the state-owned Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA), minutes of a cabinet meeting released on Tuesday said.

Sri Lanka had previously said the port would be 49% operated by India and Japan, with SLPA retaining the majority stake.

India and Japan would instead be invited to develop the nearby West terminal on a public-private partnership basis, the minutes said, without elaborating.

The decision comes less than a month after a visit by Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar to Colombo to shore up support for the 2019 deal, that also involved Japan and India's Adani Group .

"The commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka ... has been conveyed several times in the recent past, including at the leadership level," a spokesman for India's embassy in Colombo said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

"Sri Lanka's cabinet also took a decision three months ago to implement the project with foreign investors. All sides should continue to abide by the existing understandings and commitment."

Spokesmen for Adani, the Japanese embassy in Colombo and Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Sri Lanka is key in the battle for influence in South Asia between traditional power India and China, which has been making increasing inroads there.

The island nation is a crucial staging post for much of the cargo coming in and out of India, and China's growing influence has alarmed New Delhi.

Beijing took over Hambantota port in the south of the country in 2016 after Sri Lanka failed to keep up with debt repayments, and is involved in the construction and operation of a neighbouring port terminal in Colombo, as well as other critical infrastructure.

India tells Sri Lanka to honour pact after Colombo takes back port contract

Sri Lanka had previously said the port would be 49% operated by India and Japan, with SLPA retaining the majority stake.

www.hindustantimes.com

 

[Mighty Lion]

Sri Lanka will give India western terminal instead:

Sri Lanka to offer West Terminal to India, Japan, ECT to stay with state agency | EconomyNext

Sri Lanka will invite interested parties to develop a greenfield container terminal in Colombo port while a partially built East Container Terminal will remain in the hands of the state port agency, ministers said.

economynext.com

 

[hussain0216]

I think it's generally good to keep India out of these things

India has delusions of hindutva grandeur and can't be trusted

 

[samsara]

India said on Tuesday it expected Sri Lanka to honour its agreement to allow it to operate a major port terminal following Colombo's decision to pull out of the deal.

The East terminal of Colombo port will be 100% owned and operated by the state-owned Sri Lanka Port Authority (SLPA), minutes of a cabinet meeting released on Tuesday said.

Sri Lanka had previously said the port would be 49% operated by India and Japan, with SLPA retaining the majority stake.

India and Japan would instead be invited to develop the nearby West terminal on a public-private partnership basis, the minutes said, without elaborating.

The decision comes less than a month after a visit by Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar to Colombo to shore up support for the 2019 deal, that also involved Japan and India's Adani Group .

"The commitment of the Government of Sri Lanka ... has been conveyed several times in the recent past, including at the leadership level," a spokesman for India's embassy in Colombo said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

"Sri Lanka's cabinet also took a decision three months ago to implement the project with foreign investors. All sides should continue to abide by the existing understandings and commitment."

Spokesmen for Adani, the Japanese embassy in Colombo and Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Sri Lanka is key in the battle for influence in South Asia between traditional power India and China, which has been making increasing inroads there.

The island nation is a crucial staging post for much of the cargo coming in and out of India, and China's growing influence has alarmed New Delhi.

Beijing took over Hambantota port in the south of the country in 2016 after Sri Lanka failed to keep up with debt repayments, and is involved in the construction and operation of a neighbouring port terminal in Colombo, as well as other critical infrastructure.

India tells Sri Lanka to honour pact after Colombo takes back port contract

Sri Lanka had previously said the port would be 49% operated by India and Japan, with SLPA retaining the majority stake.

www.hindustantimes.com

The truth about Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port, Chinese ‘debt traps’ and ‘asset seizures’ (MAY 2019)

•Interviews, including with Sri Lankan officials, debunk claims the port was signed away to service Chinese debt

•Chinese infrastructure loans have not led to the forfeiture of a single valuable asset abroad


When critics of Beijing accuse the government of debt traps and other predatory policies, the example that crops up is almost always that of the Chinese-built Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka.

The government of Sri Lanka, a country where Chinese firms have also financed and constructed railways, roads and power stations, allegedly failed to repay Chinese loans to build the port and was then forced to lease it to China, which covets the port as a naval base.

It is part of an oft-told tale that China provides infrastructure loans to developing countries, often as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, knowing they cannot be repaid, allowing China to seize borrowing states’ valuable assets.

US consultants the Rhodium Group recently released a study into Chinese asset seizures and found just one instance: the above-mentioned Hambantota port.

However, interviews we have done in Sri Lanka show that even this lone instance is NOT REMOTELY TRUE.

The Hambantota port lease, held jointly by the Hong Kong-based China Merchants Port and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority, was negotiated over 2016-2017. Payments of the principal and interest for the port loans comprised only about 1.5 per cent of Sri Lanka’s external debt repayment obligations due then. The Sri Lanka Ports Authority paid on time, using revenues from Colombo port, which includes a successful container terminal run by China Merchants Port.

China holds an estimated 9-15 per cent of Sri Lanka’s external debt. Some of the rest is HIGH-INTEREST LOANS from (mainly WESTERN) commercial banks. INTERNATIONAL SOVEREIGN BONDS account for about HALF of the external debt, with AMERICANS holding TWO-THIRDS of their value and Asians only about 8 per cent.

Sri Lanka must pay interest averaging 6.3 per cent on international sovereign bonds and the principal must be fully repaid, on average, within SEVEN YEARS. In contrast, more than two-thirds of the value of Chinese state funds lent to Sri Lanka from 2001-2017 (including two-thirds of the Hambantota port loans) were at 2 per cent interest, and mostly repayable over 20 YEARS.

Thus, the recent reports, including one in a leading UK newspaper, that Sri Lanka’s government was forced to sign the port away on a 99-year lease after failing to repay Chinese loans that were racking up 6.3 per cent, are ERRONEOUS.

["Erroneous" ——> What an euphememism for the blatant Lies and Twists (Disinfo & Misinfo) of the habitual propaganda method used by the army of Western mainstream media and politicians. Just remember the "throwing out the babies in incubator by Assad Regime", "Iraqi WMD", "Gaddafi suppression over Libyan people" when the small yet highly prosperous oil-rich nation was turned into the largest shithole overtaking Somali today, and other long lists of lies and deliberate misrepresentations… and they wouldn't tell you the deaths of at least half a million of Iraqi babies when the USA and its allies sanctioned Iraq under Saddam Hussein.]

IRONICALLY THEN, if Sri Lanka is debt distressed, it owes more to American and other Western entities than to its Chinese counterparts. Yet, as both a past and a present governor of Sri Lanka’s central bank stressed to us in interviews, Sri Lanka has never defaulted on any loan payment and has not sought to have any external debt rescheduled.

The Hambantota port lease was not a result of any inability to service the loans, nor was it a debt-for-equity swap — the Sri Lankan government still owns the port. And funds received for the lease were not used to repay port-related debt, but to pay off MORE EXPENSIVE LOANS, generally to Western entities.

[...]

The truth about China’s role in Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port

The port has not been signed away to service Chinese debt and Chinese infrastructure loans have not led to the seizing of valuable assets abroad.

www.scmp.com

“A LIE told ONCE remains a lie but a lie told a THOUSAND times becomes the TRUTH.” ~ Joseph Goebbels

The Propaganda Multiplier – Swiss Policy Research

The Propaganda Multiplier

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system – and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global new…

swprs.org

 

[Pakistan Space Agency]

India just got the boot.

 

[ProudPak]

Isi did it.
Sri Lankan government is pro Pakistan

 

[samv]

Indo-Lankan relations will always be held hostage because of Tamil Nadu and the Tamil factor.

India cannot guarantee that the Tamil factor wont influence its relationship or policy towards Sri Lanka so Indo-Lankan relations will never reach their full potential.

Sri Lankans do not trust India given its nefarious history.

India wants its smaller neighbours to be vassal states, not equal partners.