After a tour in the Pacific, Emmanuel Macron will travel to Sri Lanka on Friday evening July 28, the Elysée announced on Wednesday. The Head of State will meet with President Ranil Wickremesinghe on the occasion of “this historic visit, the first by a French President to Sri Lanka”.
This visit “will be an opportunity to deepen bilateral relations and discuss the regional and international challenges of the two countries”, the same source added.
Emmanuel Macron is in Oceania this week: after New Caledonia from Monday to Wednesday, the French head of state has arrived in Vanuatu and still has to go to Papua New Guinea.
His stopover in Sri Lanka comes as this island off the coast of India, nine times smaller than France and populated by some 22 million inhabitants, has been going through a deep economic and political crisis for more than a year.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe took power there a year ago, after the flight of his predecessor, pushed out by monster demonstrations against the backdrop of the country’s worst economic crisis since its independence in 1948.
Beijing is indeed the main creditor of the country and a Chinese company acquired for 99 years the concession of the northern port of Hambantota whose Colombo could not reimburse the bills of the important loan granted by Beijing for its construction.
Sri Lanka is located halfway on the main international trade route between Europe and East Asia. And Colombo and Hambantota are the only deep water ports between Dubai and Singapore.
