After Tough Times, Sri Lanka Looks At Decade Of Growth With India As Key Partner

Jeevan Thondaman, the Water Resources Minister of Sri Lanka, told NDTV that today's meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the island nation's President Ranil Wickremesinghe was a "historic one" as this will renew the relationship between India and Sri Lanka. "This is going to be the decade of growth for Sri Lanka," Mr Thondaman said. "We have gone through economic crisis, the pandemic, so many issues. They eventually led us to make reforms and course corrections," he told NDTV. Among the several key matters the two neighbours discussed, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on investing more on renewable energy. "Had we invested decades ago on renewables, we wouldn't have been in this energy crisis. For example, only 2 per cent of my water plants are solar-powered. We believe we need Indian support for that," he said, adding another MoU pertains to making UPI available in Sri Lanka.