BEIJING: Sri Lanka will not make any decision on Chinese projects it is reviewing until it consults China, Sri Lanka’s foreign minister said on Friday, pledging that his new government would welcome Chinese investors.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has unnerved China with his re-examination of certain projects that China has invested in, including a $1.5 billion “port city” project in Colombo.
India, which lost out to China in infrastructure development on the Indian Ocean island, was in particular worried about the security threat posed by Chinese ownership of land, aggravated by the docking of Chinese submarines in Colombo last year.
Last week, Sri Lanka said it would reconsider the outright transfer of a parcel of land to China under the port city deal signed by the previous government, amid concern it could be used for by the Chinese navy.
Speaking in Beijing after meeting his Chinese counterpart, Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera said he did not discuss the port issue directly, and the government was not only looking into Chinese projects.
“Anything relating to Chinese investment will be shared and discussed with the government of China before we take any final decision,” Samaraweera told a news conference, citing what he told his Chinese counterpart.
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