Sri Lanka is not happy with overall Singapore investments that have come in the past few years in return for the trade liberalisation under the Singapore-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement (FTA), said Chief Negotiator, K.J. Weerasinghe.

Speaking at the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) on Tuesday (7), he said that since 99% of the tariffs in Singapore have zero rates of duty, Sri Lanka has agreed on 80% tariff liberalisation over a period of 15 years while expecting Singapore investments to address the imbalance in trade.

He said that Singapore gave assurance that more investments would be coming to Sri Lanka but when looking at the investment figures from the Board of Investments (BOI), not many projects have come.

Accordingly, one Singaporean project has come to Sri Lanka In 2021, four projects in 2022 and five projects in 2023 whose total worth is $ 162 million.

“Singapore investments are happening but it may not be up to the expectation,” he said, adding that he is not satisfied with the investment values and that it is the job of the BOI to attract investments.

The Singapore-Sri Lanka FTA which was signed in 2018 was put on hold for 5 years due to various issues in the signed agreement until President Ranil Wickremesinghe instructed in the expeditiously implementation of the FTA in 2022 following the meeting with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Tokyo.

Accordingly, the Cabinet recently approved the re-implementation of Sri Lanka’s Tariff Relaxation Programme under the FTA.

Further, Weerasinghe said that forecasted revenue loss for the Government of Sri Lanka through the Singapore FTA is Rs. 450 million in 2023 and Rs. 1.3 billion in 2024.