Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Monday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bilateral visit to Sri Lanka would focus on scaling up investment projects, expanding people to people contact and making travel between the two countries easy.
"The Prime Minister's visit to Sri Lanka will be a bilateral visit after 28 years. We have a broad substantive relation, we want to expand our people to people contact. This is the fourth visit between Sri Lanka and India in a short span, which says a lot," said Jaishankar.
The Foreign Secretary said trade between India and Sri Lanka is at USD 5.2 billion.
"Expanding infrastructure, creating employment in Sri Lanka is way to go. We have had some significant investment projects with Sri Lanka, we are looking to scale that up," said Jaishankar.
"We want to make travel easy between India and Sri Lanka, the regulations and the mechanisms," he added.
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The Foreign Secretary also announced that Prime Minister Modi would hand over homes built by India in Jaffna for the displaced people.
"The Prime Minister will hand over homes built by us in Jaffna for displaced people. So far, we have built 27,000 houses and the ones that are going to be handed over by the Prime Minister are those houses," he added.
Prime Minister Modi is expected to arrive in Sri Lanka on a two-day visit on March 13. During his visit, he will address the Sri Lankan Parliament besides visiting the Maha Bodhi Society and Jaffna.
Prime Minister Modi had earlier expressed confidence that his visit to Sri Lanka will make the relations between New Delhi and Colombo even stronger in the years to come.
