COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka is unconcerned about the Adani Group’s dealings with other countries and only focused on its $1 billion worth of projects in the island nation, President Anura Kumara Dissanyake told Indian media during an official visit to Delhi this week.
Dissanayake was on his first state trip to Sri Lanka’s powerful neighbour after winning the presidency in September and securing a landslide parliamentary election victory last month.
Sri Lanka is “concerned about our investments, our development,” he told The Economic Times in an interview published on Wednesday.
“We will be looking at how they have worked in our country. If they have worked in a manner that suits us, fits our initiatives, we don’t mind working with Adani Group.”
Sri Lanka decided to review two projects worth about $1 billion linked to the Adani Group after U.S. authorities last month accused Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani and seven others of being part of a $265 million scheme to bribe Indian officials, and of misleading U.S. investors while raising funds there.
The ports-to-power conglomerate has termed the allegations “baseless” and said it would seek “all possible legal recourse”.
India’s Adani Green Energy Ltd. has plans to invest $442 million in two wind power stations in Sri Lanka and Adani Ports. will also fund a $553 million terminal project at the Colombo port.
Dissanayake will be visiting China, the island’s biggest bilateral creditor, in January, The Hindu reported.
India extended more than $4 billion in aid to Sri Lanka when the island nation’s economy plunged into a severe financial crisis in 2022 and entered into a preliminary debt restructuring agreement, along with other bilateral creditors Japan and China, in July.
(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
