10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. Kabir Hashim

Samagi Jana Balawegaya· Kegalle· 8 January 2025 ·Debate: Debate: Orders and Regulations under Foreign Exchange Act, Payment Systems Act, and Casino Business Regulation

Public FinanceForeign Affairs
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Kabir Hashim questioned the Government on delays to the Singapore Free Trade Agreement, noting that it had undergone extensive study and was considered advantageous to Sri Lanka. He asked why the agreement was being held up despite being simpler than the proposed ETCA, and sought the Government’s position on both trade agreements.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Minister, at the Committee on Public Finance, you all had asked for the Singapore Free Trade Agreement, which was in process, to be held up because you all wanted some clarification on that. That is what you were just saying. I would like to say that the Singapore Free Trade Agreement has gone through a lot of study and it is something that is advantageous to the country. At the same time, the Government has taken a position to work on the ETCA. So, while you have agreed there, why is there a delay with regard to the Singapore Free Trade Agreement, which is much more simpler and straight forward? It is very important that it gets passed. So, I would like to know the position of the Government regarding the Singapore Free Trade Agreement and also the ETCA.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Wednesday, 8 January 2025 ·No. 1737023464031571 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
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Cite as: The Hon. Kabir Hashim. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 8 January 2025. No. 1737023464031571. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/27598