Ranil Wickremesinghe, former Sri Lankan President and Guest of Honor at the NXT Conclave 2025, sat down for a quick Q&A to discuss what could shape the future of South Asia.
Question : Talking about the future of South Asia and particularly the relationship between India and Sri Lanka, how do you envisage it in wake of the new government that has been formed recently, and of course the Prime Minister first coming to India after his election?
Wickremesinghe: Generally the president and the Prime Minister makes their first visits to India. I don’t know whether they were ready to take over the government, but what I have done is I’ve spoken with Prime Minister Modi. When we were in trouble, you all gave us four-and a half billion dollars, and with that on side, I could handle the economy. With China and Japan, the rules were stricter for them, and they couldn’t give to a country that’s bankrupt. One was because of our trade agreements and secondly because of the neighborhood first policy we got this money. I don’t think many others can, maybe Maldives or any other other countries. Sri Lanka getting out of bankruptcy was not sufficient; we also have a deficit in our foreign exchange earnings, so how do we work together? so, prime minister Modi and I spoke and we put all our projects together. I was trying to give 25 Gigawatts or even 50 (if we could do it) of renewable energy so that both our economies would have benefitted. Secondly was to make Trincomalee the regional logistic hub with the pipeline coming in from, in Nagapattinam and us putting up a refinery there and developing it. So we were thinking in terms of developing that cluster, and then I was looking at how we can develop this corridor which could have linked Madurai in the south of Tamil Nadu up to Trincomalee. So these are the issues that are there. Unfortunately, we seem to be having some problems with the first project we had -the wind power project, but I think that should go through. So let’s uh let’s see what the government works out. I think I want to take the matter up with the government and say that don’t look at these as individual projects but look at it as one big program which can send us into a trillion dollar economy. We can’t do it otherwise. But if we go along with India and also with Indonesia and Thailand, even Bangladesh, we are certainly into it.
Question : I also want to understand from you what is your perspective when it comes to China having massive influence in the subcontinent and particularly Sri Lanka because just a few months ago we saw those ships that had been sent by the Chinese on the ports of Sri Lanka, the so-called research vessels that had caused concern for India. Then we talk about the 99-year-old Hambantota lease, when we talk about the Colombo Port that is at this point of time being built by the Chinese. Are these real concerns that the Sri Lankan regime is looking to delve deeper into?
Wickremesinghe: As far as the survey ships were there, it was being done by China and some others, but I sort of stopped it for the time being to look at it and then I found that other countries were doing surveys in Sri Lanka and we were not getting the commercial benefit of it and that we should bring in a law to ensure that we had the commercial benefits and (that there) were genuinely commercial events that came along. So I had stopped it and I was hoping for Parliament to go into it but even there was a concern that some of the surveys were not commercial. My concerns went even bigger: if I don’t benefit why should I allow you to be in my sea? So we had stopped that and I think it’s being reviewed. Now, in Colombo, what has happened is that China has got one of the terminals and the other terminal has gone to Adani. So we’ll have both of those. As for Hambantota, I’m the one who handled the deal but at Hambantota, they can run a commercial enterprise only. A Southern command has to be shifted from Galle, the Navy’s Southern command into Hambantota, and we already have a brigade headquarters in Hambantota, and we are strengthening the anti-submarine capacity of our Navy. (NewsX)
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