Colombo Port City the flagship investment project set to change the Colombo Landscape is moving at full speed to complete the duty free complex. The complex will become a land mark in South Asia. China Duty Free and Singapore Duty Free is poised to set up retail operations involving an investment of over USD 50 Million.
Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Aruni Wijewardane and Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom Sir Philip Barton held discussions at the Foreign Ministry in Colombo on Tuesday 17 January 2023. The constructive bilateral engagement took place in the 75th year of UK-SL diplomatic relations.
Foreign Secretary Wijewardane briefed the UK Permanent Under Secretary on current developments in the country and the Government’s plans for 2023 as a year of socio-economic stabilization, reconciliation and recovery. Permanent Under Secretary Barton encouraged Sri Lanka’s efforts and reiterated the support of the UK in this regard.
In view of the priority placed by Sri Lanka on economic recovery and growth, Foreign Secretary highlighted the significance of Sri Lanka’s economic partnership with the UK, under the Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS) which provides duty free access to the UK market, as well as in other sectors such as enhancing UK’s contribution to Sri Lanka’s tourism and skilled labour migration. The two sides appreciated the potential to further expand trade and investment ties, including reaction to climate change objectives, and in achieving Sri Lanka’s target of achieving 70% renewable energy by 2030.
Both sides reiterated their mutual interest to initiate a Sri Lanka – UK Dialogue in the first quarter of 2023, with a view to elevating the existing multifaceted engagement and to work towards achieving tangible results through a result-oriented approach on several areas of mutually beneficial cooperation.
Foreign Secretary Wijewardane and Permanent Under Secretary of the FCDO appreciated the vibrant people-to-people ties emanating from the significant community of Sri Lankan heritage in the UK. Foreign Secretary Wijewardane apprised the Permanent Under Secretary on the Government’s intent to further engage with the overseas Sri Lankan community to better harness their synergies for mutual benefit. It was agreed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of UK-Sri Lanka diplomatic relations this year in a manner reflective of the long standing relations in a forward-looking and result-oriented manner.
In an exchange of views on regional and international developments, Foreign Secretary Wijewardena briefed the Permanent Under Secretary on Sri Lanka’s policy priorities in Indian Ocean engagement, as well as the country’s assumption of the Chair of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) this year.
During the visit, the Permanent Under Secretary Sir Barton called on the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Sabry, the State Minister of Finance Shehan Semasinghe and the Chief of Staff to the President Sagala Ratnayaka. Sir Philip Barton was accompanied by the British High Commissioner Sarah Hulton and officials of the British High Commission and the UK FCDO. Senior officials of the Foreign Ministry also participated in the meeting.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Colombo
17 January 2022
The Hold the Line Coalition (HTL) welcomes Philippine Court of Tax Appeals verdict, which has acquitted on Wednesday 18 January Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and Rappler, the news organization she founded, of tax evasion in four of seven cases brought by the government.
If they had failed to defend the charges, Maria Ressa could have gone to jail for up to 34 years and Rappler would have faced a substantial fine.
Rappler and Ressa have maintained their innocence and will continue to hold the line in defense of press freedom in the Philippines as they fight a barrage of pending cases designed to silence their reporting.
“This verdict indicates that it is possible for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to hit reset on his predecessors’ vast campaign of media repression,” said the Hold The Line Coalition Steering Committee. “We hope we are seeing the beginning of an end to the previous administration’s strategy to instrumentalize the courts as a means to undermine independent news organizations and damage journalists’ credibility. As an immediate next step, we call for all remaining cases against Rappler and Ressa to be closed and their constant persecution to be stopped once and for all.”
“Maria Ressa and Rappler will continue to fight the broader wave of multipronged attacks because they will not have their reporting stymied or their voices silenced,” said the HTL Steering Committee.
The decision by the Philippines Court of Tax Appeals applies to three cases on alleged failure to provide accurate information regarding investments, and the fourth is an accusation of knowingly avoiding paying taxes. While this judgment represents a reprieve, there is no doubt that being forced to maintain continuous legal defenses in the face of 23 cases leveled by the government since 2018 is meant to debilitate the news organization and Ressa, as well as making investors in the media sector wary of the ramifications of supporting independent local news outlets.
Ressa, her colleagues and Rappler face a sustained campaign of legal persecution and online violence, with 23 individual cases opened by the State against them since 2018. Ressa could face close to seven years in prison on a previous conviction for criminal cyber libel, which is currently in its last cycle of appeal before the Philippine Supreme Court – meaning she could still face a possible imminent prison sentence.
In an historic precedent, Rappler was officially issued a shutdown order in June 2022, reinforcing an earlier decision to revoke the outlet’s license to operate. The order was the first of its kind for the issuing agency and for Philippine media.
The Marcos administration still has an opportunity to turn the page on the Duterte government’s approach to intimidating independent news media, which has included threats to withdraw media groups’ licenses or hurt their commercial interests to encourage self-censorship when reporting on sensitive issues.
The Philippines was one of the governments participating in the U.S.-hosted Summit for Democracy in 2021, when President Rodrigo Duterte addressed other leaders as part of the event. The summit will reconvene governments and civil society in March 2023.
The HTL Coalition calls on states committed to freedom of the press and democracy, on intergovernmental organizations, on international development investors, and on international civil society groups to defend press freedom in the Philippines and urge President Marcos to revitalize the country’s commitment to a free press.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
A helicopter crashed near a kindergarten outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, causing casualties, the region’s governor said Wednesday.
Sixteen people including Ukraine’s interior minister and other senior ministry officials were killed, the national police chief said.
The governor of the Kyiv region said earlier on Wednesday that a helicopter crashed near a nursery and a residential building earlier on Wednesday.
Two children were among the dead and 10 of them were in hospital, officials said.
Sri Lanka, a lower-middle-income country, is facing an acute crisis following the impact of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and other compounding factors that have profoundly affected the country and jeopardized progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Despite important progress made for children over the past decades across most dimensions, many children do not have an adequate standard of living and significant inequalities have been aggravated by the current crisis, which has disproportionally affected urban daily wage labourers, and families from poor households in the estate sector1, rural areas and the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
UNICEF is taking urgent action by supporting emergency measures in the short term that safeguard children and mitigate a worsening situation, while also supporting the State to recover and expand services in the medium term.
Tea exports fetch little over US$ 1.2bn in 2022, down US$ 65.7mn from previous year while export volumes lowest in 25 years; fertilizer crisis and banning of herbicides cited as key reasons.
Earnings from Sri Lanka’s tea exports contracted 5 percent Year-on-Year (YoY) or by US$ 65.7 million to US$ 1.259 billion in 2022 due to reduced quantities shipped to importing markets, Sri Lanka Tea board sources revealed.
However, tea exports earnings in rupee terms rose to a record high of Rs.411 billion, mainly due to the steep depreciation of the rupee against the US dollar.
The weekly economic indicators released by the Central Bank in the first week of January showed that during 2022, the Sri Lankan rupee depreciated by 45 percent against the US dollar.
The Lankan rupee also depreciated by 41.4 percent against the euro, 38.6 percent against the Indian rupee, and 38.1 percent against the sterling pound during 2022.
In terms of volumes, Sri Lanka exported a total of 250.2 MnKgs of tea in 2022, a 12.5 percent decline when compared with the volumes shipped in 2021 (285.9 MnKgs).
According to Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB), “netting a revenue marginally less than 2021 shows the continued high demand for Ceylon Tea”.
However, tea exports in 2022 were the lowest in 25 years. In 1997, a volume of 247 MnKgs was shipped. Since then, the annual exports have been rising, recording the highest ever quantity of 327 million kilos in 2014.
“Sri Lanka’s tea export volume is directly related to production. The 2022 production figures, which are expected shortly, will be one of the lowest in recent times.
The harvest was affected due to many shortcomings experienced since 2021, the fertilizer crisis and the banning of herbicides being among the main contributory factors,” SLTB said.
Meanwhile, the annual FOB unit price of US$ 5.03 per kilo for 2022 compared to US$ 4.63 per kg in 2021 confirms the distinct preference for Ceylon Tea, SLTB added.
Sri Lanka’s Tea exports for 2022 earned a record Rs. 411 billion but posted a dip of $ 65.7 million as against previous year’s performance.
Sri Lanka Tea Board said export revenue for 2022 was $ 1.259 billion compared with $ 1.324 billion in 2021.
“Although the volume exported last year was only 250.2 million kilos, recording a 12.5% decline in comparison to 285.9 million kilos shipped in 2021, netting a revenue marginally less than 2021 shows the continued high demand for Ceylon Tea,” SLTB said
Thailand has determined to accelerate negotiations on a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Sri Lanka, aiming to finish the talks by the beginning of 2024.
According to Auramon Supthaweethum, director-general of the Trade Negotiations Department, during the third round of FTA talks held during Jan 9-10 in Colombo in Sri Lanka after four long years , the two countries agreed on a timeframe to conclude the negotiations by the beginning of 2024.
The third round of negotiations was supposed to take place in 2018, but the discussions were put on hold for four years due to the pandemic and the restructuring of Sri Lanka’s negotiations-related agencies.
According to Mrs Auramon, during the third round of talks the trade negotiating committees of the two nations focused on rules on bilateral trade in goods and services, rules of origin, investment, customs procedures, and trade facilitation.
In addition, the meeting updated the negotiation plans and set a timeframe to conclude the talks within 1-2 years.
Thailand has successfully concluded the second free trade area (FTA) negotiations with Sri Lanka recently in a bid to strengthen the economic partnership between the two countries, according to the Department of Trade…
A team from Thailand had arrived in Sri Lanka for talks on a free trade agreement which is planned to be implemented by the first quarter of 2024, the President’s office said.
The delegation headed by Auramon Supthaweethum, Director General of the Department of Trade Negotiations of Thailand held talks with Sri Lanka officials on January 09 and 10.
The talks dealt with trade in goods and services, investment rules, customs co-operation and trade facilitation and economic co-operation.
In 2021 Sri Lanka had exported US$59 million worth of goods to Thailand and its imports increased to $355 million.
Between January and November last year, the value of Thai-Sri Lankan trade stood at US$334.31 million (about 11.2 billion baht), Bangkok Post reported.
Thailand exported goods worth US$253 million to Sri Lanka, such as natural rubber, clothes, gems, ornaments, plastic pellets, machines and their parts.
Meanwhile, Thailand imported goods worth US$ 81.31 million from Sri Lanka, such as gems, diamonds, machine parts, clothes, plants and its products and chemicals, it added.
.A trade negotiations committee under President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office, the Foreign Ministry, Trade and Food Security Ministry, the Trade and Investment Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance and the Department of Commerce represented Sri Lanka at negotiations.
The Thailand FTA was a first step to join the RCEP trade agreement and a step towards strengthening traditional ties with Thailand, the President’s office said.
On the sidelines of the International Ombudsman Conference 2023, the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (Ombudsman) of Sri Lanka and Ombudsman Institution of Türkiye has entered into Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on 11 January 2023 in Ankara.
The Memorandum of Understanding between the Office Ombudsman of Sri Lanka and Ombudsman Institution of Türkiye was signed in the presence of the Speaker of the Parliament of Türkiye Mustafa Şentop, Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Türkiye Hasanthi Urugodawatte Dissanayake, Ombudsman of Sri Lanka Justice (Retd.) K. T. Chitrasiri, and Chief Ombudsman of Türkiye Şeref Malkoç. Ombudsman of Sri Lanka Parliament and Chief Ombudsman of Türkiye signed the MoU.
The main objective of the MoU is to focus on the role of the two institutions in Sri Lanka and Türkiye in the field of protection of human rights and remedies for injustices while protecting citizens from injustice and discrimination. It further creates organizational conditions for cooperation between the two parties in the field of protection of citizens’ rights, complaints and other activities related to the tasks and purposes of the work of each party and thus contribute to the protection of citizens’ rights and freedoms within the powers vested by legislations.
The International Ombudsman conference 2023 under the theme “The future of Human Rights in the 21st Century” is funded by the European Union. More than 70 Ombudsmen participated from different regions Asia, Europe, Africa and Middle East and shared the legal framework of Ombudsman in their own respective countries and their insights on protection of human rights.
Calling for nominations for the local government election will begin today (18) in the morning.
It is scheduled to end on January 21 at 12.00 noon.
Political parties and independent groups have been given time till 12.00 noon on January 20 for this election.
