China to donate $100 mln to Sri Lanka between 2018- 2020

ith bilateral ties between Sri Lanka and China getting stronger, the Asian power house has plans to donate US$100 million to Sri Lanka annually in 2018-2020 to develop different sectors including innovation.

This was stated by Chinese Ambassador Yi Xiangliang while speaking at the second Sri Lanka Broadband Forum held at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo on Tuesday.

Mr. Xiangliang said, “Last year in May when the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping met Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, he announced that China will donate US$100 million to Sri Lanka every year from 2018 to 2020 to support innovation and technology development in the island in order to enable it to be an information and telecommunication hub in South Asia.”

He also stated that telecommunication is the most important infrastructure to any country. “Every country needs to give priority to the telecommunication economy,” added Mr. Xiangliang.

Meanwhile, Minister of Telecommunication and Digital Infrastructure, Harin Fernando during his speech praised the government for removing the 10 per cent telecommunication levy on mobile broadband data which came into effect on September 1.

Mr. Fernando said, “Sri Lanka’s mobile phone penetration has risen from 96 per cent in 2012 to 126 per cent in 2017. Sri Lanka has witnessed a very strong growth in mobile broadband penetration in the last five years where the market penetration has increased from eight per cent in 2012 to 21 per cent in 2017. To further boost the broadband penetration in the country, 10 per cent telecommunication levy imposed on mobile broadband data was removed from September this year. Thank God for that. We were able to take off the 10 per cent tax with the new Finance Minister, Mangala Samaraweera tak- ing over office.” He also stated that more than 60 per cent of the global population still remains offline while elaborating that the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the increasing speed of broadband infrastructure have become core economic competencies, critical for national competitiveness across the world. According to a research, he pointed out that an additional 20 per cent investment in ICT adds one per cent to a country’s GDP and increasing the broadband penetration by 10 per cent drives a 1.38 per cent increase in GDP, also having a positive effect on employment, productivity, innovation and so on.