The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Minister, India intervened and changing the trade base that was there, they agreed to ensure that more imports of LNG from the US would come in. So, as a result, they were imposed 26 per cent of tariff while we were imposed 44 per cent. What I basically mention at this particular moment is, we cannot take on the policy, but could take practical steps to ensure that the US is given market access at zero duty, which would help us. These are not things, if you bring from one country, which could not be brought from another because the point of origin is not always the country of origin. The goods of the USA could also be bought from Japan, Dubai and Singapore, which are normally their regional bases of manufacturing. Therefore, we should basically go forward and offer a zero-based duty structure as well as an investment climate to the US companies so that we could go into the launching pad of India. That would help our policy. The reason why I basically mention this is that we have 875,000 direct and indirect jobs related to our exports to America. Out of the 11 trillion, 26 per cent is to the US and we, Sri Lankans, handle 0.09 per cent of the world trading.

¶ 02 Yes, Hon. Deputy Speaker. But, this is such an important matter, which I do not think we can rush through.

¶ 03 Hon. Deputy Minister, the most egregious situation is to ensure -

¶ 04 All I want to say is, make sure that we have a trading policy, that we have a zero-tariff base, which would help the negotiation process because the captains of the free trade world have capriciously changed their policy now, going into deglobalization. That is what we have to basically speak about. Let us have a full-day debate in Parliament so that we could bring up these matters. I do not think we can intervene when other subject matters are discussed, virtually breaching the Standing Orders.