Indian HC Santosh Jha yesterday (10) explained how the worldwide Covid-19 epidemic and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict had enhanced the Indo-Lanka ‘relationship.’Addressing the India-Sri Lanka Defence Seminar at the Taj, Jha said: “Like in other areas, we are cooperating closely on security and defence matters. Because of our geography, our security is interlinked and intertw...

Colombo has demonstrated its own brand of strategic autonomy on issues from Russia’s war in Ukraine to China’s global footprint By Michael Kugelman Most South Asian governments tend to have nonaligned foreign policies, balancing their relations with major powers. This maximizes their diplomatic flexibility and ability to operate independently on the world stage, also known as […]

, MP, were pursuing the same strategy to address the economic crisis. Therefore, […]

By Shamindra Ferdinando By the time President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had arrived in Singapore in the second week of July 2022, a few days after fleeing Sri Lanka, he firmly believed that then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was the only person capable of restoring the rule of law in the country. In the chapter titled ‘The […]

No happening in the Gaza of today is bound to trouble profoundly those blessed with a conscience than the sight of multitudes of civilians, including, of course, women and children, rushing to take hold of packets of food and other forms of essential relief that manage to trickle into the ravaged strip of land. Famine […]

By Neville Ladduwahetty During President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s India visit in July 2023, five Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) were signed by India and Sri Lanka to establish physical connections between the two countries. This was followed more recently by the launch of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) – a mechanism that claims to reduce the cost […]

India presented a new perspective to conceptualise its relationship with the West. The perspective is based on emphasizing its distinctions from BRICS co-founders China and Russia. The new approach came through by way of a response to a query, during the recently concluded 60th Munich Security Conference, about India’s freedom to choose between multiple partners […]

President Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Indian Ocean Security Conference in Colombo that the sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine had not caused the collapse of the Russian economy, which had just shifted eastwards. The following is the text of the statement issued at the conference (Phase II) organised by the Pathfinder Foundation: […]

Addressing the 37th session of the Asia and Pacific Regional Conference (APRC) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Colombo today (20), President Ranil Wickremesinghe affirmed the government’s dedication to elevating Sri Lanka as a prominent exporter of agricultural produce through rapid agricultural sector transformation. He emphasized the pivotal role […]

President Ranil Wickremesinghe in his address at the 7th Indian Ocean Conference in Perth, focusing on the theme “Towards a Stable and Sustainable Indian Ocean, ” emphasized the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, noting the Indian Ocean’s vulnerability to warming and rising sea levels

Secretary to the Treasury and Finance Ministry Mahinda Siriwardana has said that even if Sri Lanka achieves the goal of zero corruption, tax revenue will still have to be increased to bridge the budget deficit and lessen the country’s debt burden. Referring to the Supreme Court ruling pertaining to economic management delivered on Nov 14, […]

In the global political landscape of 2024, Reuters provides a comprehensive overview of key elections shaping the economic and geopolitical landscape across diverse regions. From Europe, where the rise of Eurosceptic far-right parties poses challenges to the European Union’s integration, to Russia, where Vladimir Putin is set for another term amid heightened tensions with the […]

… USD 5 mn paid to Iran a month By Shamindra Ferdinando Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera has confirmed that consumers of petrol and diesel have been made to pay Rs. 50 to Rs. 55 per litre since the middle of last year to settle what the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) owed its creditors. […]

By Saman Indrajith Forty-eight-year-old Batticaloa District MP Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, popularly known as Pillayan, has been shaping the Eastern Province’s political narrative since he was a teenager. He was just 16-years old when he joined the LTTE in 1990 as a child soldier. Since then, he continued to rise in the ranks of the LTTE until […]