{"id":106183,"date":"2020-09-02T14:54:45","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T21:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=106183"},"modified":"2020-09-02T14:54:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T21:54:45","slug":"us-sanctions-on-selected-chinese-companies-will-worsen-sri-lankan-economic-downturn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/02\/us-sanctions-on-selected-chinese-companies-will-worsen-sri-lankan-economic-downturn\/","title":{"rendered":"US Sanctions on Selected Chinese Companies Will Worsen Sri Lankan Economic Downturn"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>USA has announced\neconomic sanctions on a number of Chinese companies and other companies that\ndeal with them. Among them are Chinese companies involved in the Port City,\nHambantota Port and Mattala Airport. This is obviously a US attack on China\u2019s\none belt one road\u201d initiative. The impact on Sri Lanka will be catastrophic\ngiven the massive amount of money already spent on these unviable projects.\nRepayments must have to be made, otherwise China can takeover the land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Port City\nwas touted as the development project that can make or break Sri Lanka. If\nforeign investors (not local investors) flocked to buy its land as expected and\nthey build the next financial hub of Asia and global players patronize their\nbusinesses, Sri Lanka\u2019s economy would grow at astronomical rates. However, if\nany one of the do not happen, it will be the opposite. Sri Lanka will have to\nrepay loans worth billions of dollars without any profitable returns from these\nprojects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Port City\nwas opened for investment for one year now. However, no foreign investor (not\neven from China) has come forward to buy or lease any land there or put up\ntheir investment properties. Now it is even unlikely they will come. There is\nno worth in local investors or the government buying into this area \u2013 they do not\nbring anything into the country but the loans and their interest must be paid\nto external parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Port City\nmust be regularly maintained to repair erosion, sustain sandbanks and keep the\nsea from reclaiming it; a very costly affair. Sri Lanka has three white\nelephants to maintain without any profitable gain. The damage already done to\nthe environment building these is enormous. As a result, erratic weather,\nearthquakes, droughts, landslide, etc. become frequent. These are not costed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka\nmust immediately stop the disastrous western model of borrowing to do\ndevelopment work. It does not work. The best example is USA which is saddled\nwith a government debt close to $20 trillion, almost the size of the US\neconomy. The only profitable approach is to source local finance, local labour,\nlocal constructors and foreign expertise. If local commercial banks do not\nsupport it, that is a clear indication it is an unviable project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dilrook Kannangara USA has announced economic sanctions on a number of Chinese companies and other companies that deal with them. Among them are Chinese companies involved in the Port City, Hambantota Port and Mattala Airport. This is obviously a US attack on China\u2019s one belt one road\u201d initiative. The impact on Sri Lanka will be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}