Sri Lanka, India have agreed to facilitate mutual investments through policy consistency, promoting ease of doing business and fair treatment of each other’s investors.
This has been done to facilitate investments from India in the divestment of Sri Lankan State-owned Enterprises and in manufacturing/economic zones in various sectors in Sri Lanka; to undertake discussions on Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement with an aim to comprehensively enhance bilateral trade and investments in new and priority areas, according to a bilateral document issued by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
As per the document titled “Promoting Connectivity, Catalysing Prosperity: India-Sri Lanka Economic Partnership Vision”, the decision to designate INR as currency for trade settlements between the two countries has forged stronger and mutually beneficial commercial linkages and agreed to operationalise UPI-based digital payments for further enhancing trade and transactions between businesses and common people.
“Today, we have adopted a vision document for our economic partnership. The vision is to strengthen maritime, air, energy and people- to-people connectivity between the two peoples. The vision is to accelerate mutual cooperation in tourism, electricity, business, higher education, and skill development,” PM Modi said.
In a joint press statement along with Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe in New Delhi on Friday, PM Modi also said that the two nations have decided to start ferry services from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka.
“We agree on the enhancement of air connectivity between India and Sri Lanka. To increase trade and travel by people, we have taken the decision to start passenger ferry services between Nagapattinam in Tamil. Nadu and Kankesanturai in Sri Lanka,” PM Modi said.
The two sides also decided to work towards early resumption of ferry services between Rameshwaram and Talaimannar, and other mutually agreed places. (Times of India)
