{"id":108332,"date":"2020-11-04T17:16:41","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T00:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=108332"},"modified":"2020-11-04T17:16:41","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T00:16:41","slug":"prime-minister-and-french-ambassador-discuss-educational-scholarships-investment-and-hambantota-port-november-4-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/11\/04\/prime-minister-and-french-ambassador-discuss-educational-scholarships-investment-and-hambantota-port-november-4-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime Minister and French Ambassador Discuss Educational Scholarships, Investment and Hambantota Port &#8211; November 4, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>Prime Minister\u2019s Media Unit<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>France is keen on establishing more\npeople-to-people contact with Sri Lanka, through initiatives such as\nscholarship and exchange programs. This was expressed by the Ambassador of\nFrance in Sri Lanka Eric Lavertu when he met Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa\nyesterday (Nov. 3) evening at Temple Trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Ambassador mentioned that a number of\ngovernment sector employees are already pursuing advance studies at French\nhigher educational institutions and that the two countries could collaborate on\nmore student exchange programs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the courtesy call, the French\nAmbassador also congratulated the Prime Minister on the election victory and\nspoke highly about the Government\u2019s handling of the pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019re all in the same boat,\u201d Ambassador\nLavertu said while opining that the low COVID-19 related death rate in Sri\nLanka is indicative of the good healthcare infrastructure that Sri Lanka has\ninvested in throughout the years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prime Minister Rajapaksa said that the\nGovernment\u2019s first priority is to deal with bringing the pandemic situation\nunder control. Thereafter, the focus will be on economic development, the Prime\nMinister added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition to France being keen to be a\npart of the development of the Hambantota Port,\u201d Ambassador Lavertu said that\nFrance is also in the market for more Sri Lankan products, indicating a\npotential to increase trade relations between the two countries. Both countries\nare keen to further bilateral trade and investment. Currently, Sri Lanka\u2019s\nmajor exports to France include apparel, precious stones and pneumatic rubber\ntires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister\u2019s Media Unit France is keen on establishing more people-to-people contact with Sri Lanka, through initiatives such as scholarship and exchange programs. This was expressed by the Ambassador of France in Sri Lanka Eric Lavertu when he met Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday (Nov. 3) evening at Temple Trees. The Ambassador mentioned that a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108332","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=108332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}