Courtesy Hiru News

In an exclusive interview of Sri Lankan PM Ranil Wickremesinghe with Palki Sharma on WION’s Global Leadership, he said, this is the most challenging appointment I ever had and someone had to take up the challenge.

Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said that India helped the island nation way more than China while they were going through a major economic crisis. Wickremesinghe was made prime minister of Sri Lanka amid tremendous inflation and resulting protests. In an exclusive interview with Managing Editor of WION Palki Sharma, the Sri Lanka PM explained that China had a lot of red tape when it came to helping Sri Lanka and that is why they focused more on negotiations with India.

“They (China) helped in some ways, but big arrangements did not come through because we focused on India. I don’t think they could get much from China and Japan during that time. It is not a fault of Colombo as we decided to focus on India because India came up with the money. And that’s what we wanted. It is the question of who had less red tape,” Wickremesinghe said in the interview.

Wickremesinghe was quick to point out that the Sri Lankan government does not believe that China ditched them during tough times and made it clear that he will be speaking to China about the donor conference which is aimed towards the “Reconstruction and Development of Sri Lanka”

I don’t think they (China) have ditched Sri Lanka. Well, I think actually we should have negotiated with them (China) but we did not. I can’t understand why we did not. We just made a request.

With the crisis in Sri Lanka, they (China) have been silent from few months. I don’t know how much the previous government had negotiated earlier. But I intent to start talking with China. And get them to get into the donor conference. Which they have agreed to get into the donor conference and get help that way,he said while explaining his government’s future stance towards China.