Lanka may not accede to India economic pact – Indian media
May 27, 2010 07:53 am
The expected Indian attempt to secure Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s nod for an India-Sri Lanka Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) when the latter visits New Delhi on June 8, seems doomed to fail, Indian media prophesied today.
In a report Indian daily Express Buzz reports the following...
The moment it became known that CEPA was high on the Indian
agenda, lobbies against it were activated in Sri Lanka.
On Tuesday, hundreds of professionals (doctors and engineers
mainly) demontrated in front of the President’s office at Temple Trees, againstIndia’s bid to “thrust” CEPA
on Sri Lanka.
The demonstrators called upon the President not to yield to Indian pressure.
Sri Lankan businessmen and professionals fear that their
Indian counterparts would swarm Sri
Lanka driving them out of their jobs.
In a rare gesture, the President spoke to the demonstrators,
and told them that he would not sign any agreement which would have an adverse
impact on Sri Lanka.
He also stated that any agreement would have to benefit both parties.
Though couched in general terms, these statements reflected
Rajapaksa’s own strong reservations about CEPA with India.
India’s
bid to get Sri Lankato sign the CEPA goes back to a number of years. Experts from both sides had
gone into the proposed clauses with great care.The issues thrown up by the
proposed agreement had been discussed at length in academic seminars and trade
organisations. The then minister for international trade and industrial
development, G.L.Peiris, who is now the Minister for External Affairs, had
advocated the CEPA. The Central Bank, the Institute of Policy Studiesand other think tanks had written in support of the agreement.
But at the very last moment, Rajapaksa backed out of it.
He continues to be of the view that the Sri Lankan
services sector cannot stand an Indian influx, and small Lankan businessmen
will be wiped out. He even fears an influx of unskilled lndian labour as it
happened in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries to cause what came to be known
as the “Indian Tamil” problem.
Rajapaksa told a leading South East Asian daily recently
that Indian labourers were working in Sri Lanka illegally already. He
said that he had himself seen Indian farm labourers in his home district in
south Sri Lanka.
LANKA CALL FOR FTA REVIEW
While Indiawill be keen on moving beyond the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (ISLFTA)
which it has hailed as a grand success, and go for a CEPA, the Sri Lankans will
like to restrict the discussions to the FTA to correct its many flaws.
There is still a feeling in Sri
Lanka that the Non Tariff Barriers in India and
several Indian rules tend to nullify the advantages gained by the country from
the customs duty concessions under the FTA.
But the Indians say that Sri Lankan entrepreneurs are still
to make full use of the existing facilities under the FTA to capture a larger
part of the vast Indian market.
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