Sri Lanka and India are working on an Economic and Technical Cooperation Partnership, to enhance further economic ties between the two South Asia countries.
“We are doing an Economic and Technological Cooperation Partnership with India,” Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said during a visit to Singapore last week (ended Oct 17).
“We have an FTA (Free Trade Agreement) with India but we have to upgrade it to economic and technological collaboration,” he said in an interview with The Straits Times.
“We are looking at (India’s strengths in) software, and Indians are looking at what they can get from us.
“The new Indian government is favourable to it,” he told the Singapore daily.
The India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement came into force in March 2000.
In 2014, bilateral trade was US$4.6 billion, a growth of 23.37% compared to 2013. Exports from India to Sri Lanka in 2014 were US$3.977 billion, while exports from Sri Lanka to India were US$625 million, according to Sri Lankan Customs data.
India’s cumulative investment in Sri Lanka is over US$1 billion since 2003, putting it among the top four investors in Sri Lanka.
The investments are in petroleum retail, IT, financial services, real estate, telecommunication, hospitality & tourism, banking and food processing (tea & fruit juices) vanaspati, copper and other metal industries), tires, cement, glass manufacturing, and infrastructure development (railway, power, water supply). fii-news.com
