Diplomatic bungling by the new government in the South Asian island state of Sri Lanka is likely to lead to a loss of US$ 9 billion in investments during the period 2016 to 2020, international experts warned.
They pointed out that the loss, of these sorely needed investments from international organizations and private sector partners, is the result of three recent well planned diplomatic disasters by the new Sri Lankan administration which has been in power for less than 10 months but is mindlessly working to make a bad situation worse for its 22 million citizens.
The first diplomatic disaster was the low level presence at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in July, where the government could have laid out its 2020 vision for industrialization and holistic development.
This failure meant that Sri Lanka was unable to play a pivotal role in the crafting of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),and the post-2015 development agenda, which were unanimously approved by the United Nations General Assembly last month.
This was compounded by the failure of Sri Lankan diplomats to arrange bilateral working meetings for the president Maithripala Sirisena with heads of international organizations such as the World Bank and UNDP.
Sadly, therefore he could not negotiate and obtain the billions in investments necessary to fully develop post-war Sri Lanka´s agribusiness and agro industries.
The president in his manifesto pledged to improve relations with international organizations to the benefit of all Sri Lankans especially in the national development and economic empowerment of women and youth, including in the post war Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka.
This third and final act of this well planned diplomatic disaster is the ongoing appointment of a retired bureaucrat as ambassador to a wealthy Central European state which has misgivings about her competence and human rights record.
The said Central European state was indignant to receive the credentials of the ambassador-designate in the midst of the Sri Lanka parliamentary election campaign in August, and therefore took longer than usual to provide its consent or Agrément as the prospective ambassador has been unemployed since 2008 and over the past seven years has made no positive national or international contribution since her retirement from four decades of government employment.
This is triple loss for Sri Lanka as this ambassador is accredited to the host county, concurrently accredited to nine other ex-communist central European states and is also Permanent Representative to several international organizations.
The Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has been at the receiving end of the machinations of incompetent and self-serving Sri Lankan diplomats, last week vowed to rectify the situation, however, in the meantime Sri Lanka´s best ever diplomat who has been negotiating the first tranche of the US$ 9 billion in investments is being recalled while he is just four weeks away from successfully concluding this once in a lifetime gift for the people of Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka has an unprecedented opportunity to increase its per capita income to US$ 10,000, receive massive debt relief, become an agroindustrial superpower and create five million skilled jobs for its youth, the failure to do so has led to three civil conflicts since 1970. Will the Triple Gem enlighten the Sri Lankan government before it's too late?
