The Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) between India and Sri Lanka will be signed by the end of this year, said Ranil Wickremesinghe, prime minister of Sri Lanka. He also stated that the governments of the two countries were working to expand the India-Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement to include services and investment as well.
The ETCA is expected to promote growth of up to $500 billion within the sub-regional economy. It will also help Sri Lanka get wider access to the rapidly growing Indian market. The announcement to sign the ETCA, which has been under negotiation for some time now, was made by the country’s prime minister at the Inaugural Plenary at the India Economic Summit organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) in New Delhi.
Sri Lanka was in the process of negotiating Free Trade Agreements with several countries. India would have access to not only the Sri Lankan market but also to markets in Singapore, Japan and China after these agreements came into play. Wickremesinghe also invited Indian companies to invest in various sectors in his country as he aims to convert it into a logistic, finance and business hub of South Asia.
