Recently, Sri Lanka was in turmoil as the economy went for a toss, and people came out on the streets against the political class targeting President Gotabaya Rajapaksa with ‘Go Gota Go’ slogans that saw the former leader run for life. He fled to the foreign shores handing over the Presidency to former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, the man who can turn the sinking economy around, as the present Ambassador of Sri Lanka to India, Milinda Moragoda says. In a free-wheeling interaction with Priti Prakash, the High Commissioner gave a fair picture of what went wrong with their economy, how is it being addressed now besides touching upon issues such as trade with India, investments and docking of the Chinese ship at Colombo. Following are the excerpts from the interview:
- India extended financial assistance worth $4 billion to Sri Lanka. How long will it take for Sri Lanka to stabilize economically and politically?
- India is the anchor of security in this region. Without India we would not have been able to last this far. We are grateful to India for their support. We see our resurgence as a two-step way to recovery. First, stabilization, and then revival phase in which India will play a key role. Revival will come through investments, market access and looking at new areas for integration. The only way we can turn this around is growth and India is a key component of that. We are trying to reach some point of agreement with the IMF and are hopeful that other countries will also join.
- India had conveyed her concerns over the docking of Chinese ship in Sri Lanka. How do you see these issues in the larger context of regional integration?
- It is a challenge. Our region has so many armed powers, and the strategic and political scenario is very complex. We are talking to India over how to avoid such incidents in future. How do we have better and transparent communication, and how can we develop some kind of a framework to avoid such issues. Lot of technologies today are dual purpose technologies. They can be used for both peace and war, and 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.
Approval for this was granted at a time when we were in a state of chaos on the ground. Having granted it, we couldn’t have done anything after that. The lesson learnt is that we need to have very close coordination and cooperation with India. We are working on a framework of operation. There was no intention of working against India’s security interests. If China is a friend, India is a family.
