Wickramasinghe sees huge potential in cooperation with China

The Lankan PM said that both countries share similarities in the way of thinking in various fields such as economic restructuring

Sri Lanka sees huge potential in economic cooperation with China, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe has said, voicing confidence that key ventures like the Colombo Port City project will help transform his country into a financial hub in the Indian Ocean region.

"Both Sri Lanka and China are deepening reforms, in the process of which we see huge potential for cooperation," Wickremesinghe said as he concluded a four-day visit here.

Sri Lanka and China share similarities in the way of thinking in various fields such as economic restructuring, he said.

"Sri Lanka is ready to seek more economic cooperation opportunities with China," he said.

"Infrastructure is just a start. The cooperation between China and Sri Lanka is expected to be intensified and go far beyond that," Wickremesinghe said.

"For example, the Colombo Port City will become a financial and business hub in not only Sri Lanka, but also in the whole region of the Indian Ocean," he said.

This is Wickremesinghe's seventh visit to China while first time since winning a parliamentary election in August last year.

"It has been 37 years since I first visited China in 1979 when the country just initiated reform and opening up. The great achievement China has made proves only reform can make a country stronger," Wickremesinghe said.

Currently, the weak global economic growth requires all the economies to rely more on each other, and there is no exception for Sri Lanka andChina.

"That is why strengthening cooperation is so important," he told state-run Xinhua news agency.

Sri Lanka has shown its willingness to develop greater synergies between its own strategies and China's 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road initiative.

Projects such as the Hambantota Port and the Puttalam Coal Power Plant Project have become icons for the two countries' cooperation in infrastructure construction, Wickremesinghe said.

In a joint statement issued on Saturday, Sri Lanka announced the resumption of work of the Colombo Port City Project and expressed the willingness to facilitate and support the implementation of this projectand to cooperate with Chinese companies to promote other major projects.

Wickremesinghe also spoke highly of the supply-side structural reform, one of the priorities in China's 13th Five-Year Plan, believing it will bring fresh impetus to China's economic development and that of Asia and the whole world.

"As China has become the second largest source of visitors to Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe expects tourism will not only facilitate people-to-people exchanges, but also attract more Chinese investors to make relevant infrastructure more developed in Sri Lanka," Wickremesinghe said.

Tourists from India constitutes highest number of tourists in Sri Lanka.