Australian trade official warns SL against leaving Singapore FTA

An official with Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Elizabeth Ward this week warned Sri Lanka against overturning the Free Trade Agreement signed with Singapore. 

Speaking at an event in Colombo, Ward warned of the risk of outward flight of investments and reputational damage. 

"Can you roll back an FTA? The damage to Sri Lanka’s reputation would be so bad in international arena," she was quoted by Economy Next as saying. 

"You wouldn’t be able to do an FTA for a long time," she added. 

"There would be capital flight from the country and ramifications on the services coming to this country."

Last month the Sri Lankan president appointed an expert committee to re-examine the Singapore FTA which was signed in January, after the Joint Opposition reiterated its threat of legal action to overturn it. 

Add new comment

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.

Restricted HTML

  • You can align images (data-align="center"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • You can caption images (data-caption="Text"), but also videos, blockquotes, and so on.
  • Global and entity tokens are replaced with their values. Browse available tokens.
  • You can embed media items (using the <drupal-media> tag).

We need your support

Sri Lanka is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist. Tamil journalists are particularly at threat, with at least 41 media workers known to have been killed by the Sri Lankan state or its paramilitaries during and after the armed conflict.

Despite the risks, our team on the ground remain committed to providing detailed and accurate reporting of developments in the Tamil homeland, across the island and around the world, as well as providing expert analysis and insight from the Tamil point of view

We need your support in keeping our journalism going. Support our work today.

link button