Sri Lanka is seeking to harness its strategic location and deepen ties with China through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya said in an interview with China Media Group aired Friday.
Highlighting both opportunities and priorities, she noted that Sri Lanka is looking to attract investment, expand trade, and pursue sustainable growth while drawing on China’s experience in modernization and infrastructure development. "We are looking for investment. We are looking to expand our trade, our tourism, our manufacturing industries. We want to ensure that our development is green, that it's sustainable, that we are energy independent. In all of these, the Chinese government has invested in our highways, in our infrastructure, in our energy sector and in our manufacturing sector. So these are all sort of very good fits. For me, this is also a very important area in that China has always invested in Sri Lanka's education, we are trying to make our education more modernized, make it more digitally friendly and future ready. And China is supporting us a lot on that as well. That is another area I think where I see a lot of support from China where we can work together and of course also with agriculture and in health. Again, China has come forward to help Sri Lanka," she said.
As one of the first countries to sign on to the BRI, Sri Lanka has pursued a range of pragmatic projects with China since 2013. Amarasuriya highlighted the initiative’s importance, noting its tangible role in shaping the country's economic and social development. "I think the Belt and Road Initiative is about a shared future, about shared modernization, shared development. And that is important for us, through our strategic location geographically as well means that we are well positioned to be part of that shared future and to benefit from the lessons that China is willing to share with us on modernization and development. So this is why we were one of the first countries to agree to the Belt and Road Initiative and to be a part of that. And the investments that China has made in port city, in harbours, all of this, I think, speaks to that investment and that collaboration," she said. China and Sri Lanka share a time-honored friendship. The Rubber-Rice Pact was signed in December 1952 when China needed to import rubber and other supplies and Sri Lanka, which sees rubber as a key export, was facing rising price of rice and slump of rubber price.
In recent years, bilateral cooperation in various sectors has continued to deepen, including infrastructure construction, port economy, modern agriculture, fishery, marine conservation, and tourism, yielding fruitful results.
Sri Lanka seeks deeper cooperation with China under BRI
