COLOMBO, 3 Feb: Debt-stricken Sri Lanka signed a trade pact with Thailand on Saturday in a bid to boost trade and investment as the Indian ocean island nation is struggling to recover from its worst economic crisis that hit two year ago.
\nThe Sri Lanka Thailand Free Trade Agreement cove-ring trade in goods, invest-ment, custom procedures and intellectual property rights was signed in the capital Colombo in the presence of Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickreme-singhe and Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin.
\nSri Lanka began talks with Thailand on a free trade agreement in 2016.
\nThe countries\u2019 two-way trade was worth about $352 million in 2022, with Thailand\u2019s exports at $292 million and Sri Lanka\u2019s exports at $58 million, according to Sri Lankan government\u2019s data.
\nSri Lanka exports include mainly precious stones, apparel, tea and spices while exports from Thailand include smoked rubber sheets, natural rubber, plastic and cement. Sri Lanka\u2019s government expects the trade pact would boost two-way trade up to $1.5 billion.
\nThavisin said that the countries agreed to promote investment in areas such as fisheries, food processing, tourism and green energy. Thailand has made over $92 million in direct investment in Sri Lanka from 2005 to 2022.
\nGiving further boost to tourism, Thavisin said that Thailand\u2019s flag carrier Thai Airways would resume daily flights from Bangkok to Sri Lanka next month.
\nSri Lanka has been struggling with an economic crisis since declaring bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83 billion in debt, more than half of it to foreign creditors. The crisis led to protests that ousted then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
\nSevere shortages of food, fuel and medicine have largely abated over the past year under Wickreme-singhe. But public dissatis-faction has grown over the government\u2019s effort to increase revenue by raising electricity bills and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and busine-sses. The International Monetary Fund approved a four-year bailout program last March to help the South Asian country. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COLOMBO, 3 Feb: Debt-stricken Sri Lanka signed a trade pact with Thailand on Saturday in a bid to boost trade and investment as the Indian ocean island nation is struggling to recover from its worst economic crisis that hit two year ago. The Sri Lanka Thailand Free Trade Agreement cove-ring trade in goods, invest-ment, custom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-233905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}