Author: Branita

The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) must provide US dollars to the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, if it needs fuel continuously, Minister of Energy Udaya Gammanpila said adding that if the CEB provides the dollars, the Ministry of Energy is prepared to import and supply the required stocks of fuel for power generation.

“Amidst the prevailing dollar crisis in the country, the CPC goes through serious difficulties to earn USD $400 million every month, to ensure the adequate supply of fuel stocks required for transportation and other industries,” Minister Gammanpila noted.

According to Minister Gammanpila, the Ministry of Energy has informed the CEB three months ago that if they require fuel for power generation, they should inform in advance.

“However, the CEB informed us on the 11th of January that they require Diesel from the 13th of January. We do not possess additional stocks of Diesel to supply on such short notice,” Minister Gammanpila pointed out.

He emphasized that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation is ready to import and supply fuel if the Ceylon Electricity Board provides the necessary dollars, adding that the CEB can also directly import fuel by themselves.

At the same time, Minister of Power Gamini Lokuge says that a discussion will be held with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation to obtain fuel until the 22nd of this month.

“The CPC has provided 3000 Metric Tonnes of fuel for the power generation at the Kelanitissa Power Plant. It is sufficient to ensure an uninterrupted supply of power until Tuesday (Jan. 18),” Minister Lokuge noted.

According to the Minister, the CPC is informed of the amount of fuel required annually.

“Due to the concessions granted to the consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the CEB is yet to receive arrears payments worth around Rs. 44 billion,” Minister Gamini Lokuge pointed out.

The High Commissioner of India, Gopal Baglay, the Sri Lankan Minister of Youth and Sports, Minister of Development Co-ordination and Monitoring and State Minister of Digital Technology and Enterprise Development, Namal Rajapaksa, and the Minister of State for Estate Housing and Community Infrastructure jointly Jeevan Thondaman handed over house keys to more than 1000 beneficiaries from plantation areas of Sri Lanka at a public event in Kotagala on January 15.

Members of Parliament S.B Dissanayake and M. Rameshwaran and other dignitaries took part in the well-attended event.

Speaking on the occasion, High Commissioner conveyed Pongal greetings in Tamil. He stressed that India will stand with Sri Lanka and continue to work for the development of Indian origin Tamil community. He noted that the community was an organic link between India and Sri Lanka and underlined that the Festival of Pongal represented shared civilizational ties between the two countries.

The handed over houses were built under the third phase of the Indian Housing Project. 4000 houses are being constructed with grant assistance from the Government of India in plantation areas, spread across seven districts of Sri Lanka, under this phase for the estate workers in Sri Lanka. Around 3000 houses have already been handed over to beneficiaries till date and handing over of close to 750 houses is being scheduled under this phase. The remaining houses are at various stages of implementation.

Indian Housing Project is a flagship development assistance program in Sri Lanka which is being carried out in different phases. 46,000 houses were built/repaired in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka in the first two phases. Another 10,000 houses shall be constructed in the plantation areas in the next phase. This would take the Government of India’s overall commitment under the project to 60,000 houses.

The dignitaries took part in a traditional ‘Maatu Pongal’ ceremony prior to the handing over event, which was attended by thousands and featured cultural performances.

Celebration of Pongal in Sri Lanka attests to the abiding cultural linkages between the people of India and Sri Lanka as well as the shared heritage. Development assistance is a key pillar of bilateral relations between the two countries. At a total quantum of around USD 3.5 billion, development assistance from India cuts across sectors spanning from infrastructure development to all aspects of daily human lives such as education, health, livelihood, among others. Estate workers from plantation areas have been at the centre of such assistance and several projects implemented through grant assistance by the Government of India including the 150-bed hospital in Dickoya, multi-purpose hall in Saraswathy Central College in Pussellawa etc reinforce India’s ongoing focus on the region under the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.

Apart from looking after her toddler, Maram Khalifa’s days consist mostly of trying to find ways to bring her husband home. Hejaaz Hizbullah, a prominent Sri Lankan civil rights lawyer, has been in prison for about 20 months, under anti-terrorism charges.

Prosecutors accuse him of hate speech and causing communal disharmony.

They allege that Mr Hizbullah gave a speech to young Muslim boys inciting them against the Christian community.

Mr Hizbullah, who is from the minority Muslim community, spent more than a year in prison before the charges were levelled in April 2021, and he has remained in prison since. His trial is due to begin later this month. His wife firmly rejects the charges.

“He was outspoken, very active in defending Muslim rights and minority rights in general,” she told the BBC. The charges against her husband were “a message to anyone who wants to speak about against racism, against discrimination”, she said.

Mr Hizbullah was first arrested in connection with the devastating 2019 Easter Sunday suicide bombings, carried out by local Islamists. More than 260 people were killed when high-end hotels and churches were targeted.

Initially, he was accused of having links with one of the bombers. His lawyers say the prosecution later dropped those allegations after they pointed out that he had only appeared in two civil cases involving property disputes for the father of the attacker, a well-known spice trader.

Amnesty International last year called Mr Hizbullah, a vocal critic of the government, a “prisoner of conscience”.

Activists say that the arrest of Mr Hizbullah is part of ongoing harassment of the minority community in recent years. Ethnic fault lines run deep in Sri Lanka, where Muslims constitute less than 10% of the country’s 22 million people, who are predominantly Sinhalese Buddhists.

Muslims were allies of the government during the nearly three-decade war against the Tamil Tiger rebels, who were fighting for a separate homeland for the other minority Tamil community.

But Muslim leaders say the attitude of a section of the majority Sinhalese towards them changed after the war ended with the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in May 2009.

Rights groups point out that there had been anti-Muslim riots, targeting houses and businesses, by the ethnic Sinhalese mob even before the Easter Sunday attacks took place.

The Easter Sunday bombings were a watershed moment. Weeks after the attacks, Muslim properties and mosques were vandalised by Sinhalese mobs and hate speech became virulent on social media. The Muslim community was demonised and there were calls by Sinhalese hardliners to boycott Muslim shops.

The current president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who as defence secretary led the war efforts against the Tamil rebels, came to power in November 2019 with a strong backing from Sinhala Buddhist nationalists. He campaigned on a platform of national security.

With his elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa winning parliamentary elections a year later, the Rajapaksas firmly tightened their grip on power.

“For the government it is a trump card that they keep using to keep the vote base – saying that there is a threat to the country from Islamic extremists,” Hilmy Ahamed, from the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, told the BBC.

The Government of Sri Lanka is optimistic of succeeding in its plan to restructure its debt with bilateral and multilateral lenders if its current attempts to restructure the debt with the Chinese Government materialises, the Treasury told The Sunday Morning Business.

Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, Treasury Secretary S. R. Attygalle stated that if the Government of China were to extend its support to Sri Lanka, and given the existing supporting ally, the Government of India, other lenders would also be willing to help Sri Lanka restructure its debt repayment.

“India has supported us, and similarly the Cabinet requested China to restructure the debt. We will see how it goes; when these two Governments do so, certain others will also follow,” Attygalle said.

United National Party (UNP) Leader and former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, in an interview held last week for international news agency WION, opined that Sri Lanka would not be restructuring its debt with the Chinese Government.

“If China restructures its debt, it will also have to do so for a large number of countries on the Belt and Road Initiative, so I don’t think there will be restructuring on the debt, because you can’t restructure the debt of one country and not on the others,” Wickremesinghe highlighted.

Meanwhile, responding to this claim by Wickremesinghe and others in opposition, Attygalle said that there could be different forms of restructuring debt; for example, one could be given the option of not settling payments now but doing so after two years and so on.

“If the lender is willing to give, then what is the problem? It’s his money and he is saying to pay later. These are bilateral loans with China and if the lender is willing to postpone, there is no problem,” Attygalle stressed.

On 9 January, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa put forward this request at a meeting held with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“The President pointed out that it would be a great relief to the country if attention could be paid to restructuring debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic,” the President’s Office said.

The statement also said China was asked to provide “concessional” terms for its exports to Sri Lanka, which amounted to around $ 3.5 billion last year, without providing further details.

Further, Rajapaksa also offered to permit Chinese tourists to return to Sri Lanka provided they adhered to strict Covid regulations.

Subsequent to this announcement, Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal on 12 January stated that the Sri Lankan Government was presently in negotiations with China to obtain a loan to cushion the effect of the existing debt repayments to China.

According to Cabraal, the Government’s strategy is to restructure the country’s debt structure in a manner that does not inflict pain on investors who kept faith in the country. Cabraal noted that the Government would implement its debt restructuring process while considering the interests of investors.

China is Sri Lanka’s fourth biggest lender, behind international financial markets, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and Japan. According to official data, China has lent Sri Lanka over $ 5 billion (£ 3.7 billion) in the last decade for projects including roads, an airport, and ports.

Sri Lanka has also received billions of dollars of soft loans from China but the island nation has been engulfed in a foreign exchange crisis, which some analysts opine have pushed it to the verge of default.

Sri Lanka’s debt-ridden government is now negotiating a fresh financial relief package from Japan amounting to between $2billion and $3.5 billion similar to Indian assistance of US$ 900 million granted to Sri Lanka recently, with the aim of overcoming the current economic crisis.

The exact amount of the planned swap of the loan into dollars is yet to be finalised as it depends on the outcome of the ongoing negotiations, a senior official who wished to remain anonymous told the Business Times.

Japan has historically been a major source of development aid for Sri Lanka, providing the country not just with financial but also technical assistance.

The Japanese loan will further deepen the bilateral relationship between the two states, which has been amicable under the present government, he said.

He added that for Sri Lanka the loan offers the opportunity to restructure its financial liabilities on more favourable terms.

The loan from Japan may be from a Japanese agency or institution and it will be issued in Japanese yen and carry an interest rate of just 0.05 per cent, informed sources said.

The Finance Ministry will also enter into foreign financing agreements with foreign development partners including Japan and lending agencies to support the public investment programme this year.

Sri Lanka anticipates more financial commitment considering the urgent needs of the country to support the budgetary activities, he pointed out.

Sri Lanka faces one of its worst economic crises, with foreign reserves which stood at around $3.1 billion, enough for a few months of imports.

It also has foreign debt obligations over $6 billion this year, including repayment of bonds worth $500 million in January 18 and $1 billion in July.

The cash strapped government is to pursue further loans from other multilateral lending agencies (such as the World Bank) and other bilateral agencies, particularly those in India and China.

For the development support it will seek access to financial assistance from multilateral lending agencies and foreign governments.

The Finance Ministry has requested Japan to restructure (Sri Lanka’s) debts and access to preferential credit for imports of essential goods, as the island nation struggles in its worst economic crisis,

Under the Indian line of credit, Sri Lanka is to purchase 500 mini buses for commuter transport services and 750 jeeps for the Police Department.