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

The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva

Samagi Jana Balawegaya· Colombo· 9 April 2025 ·Debate: Debate: Value Added Tax (Amendment) Bill - Second Reading (Afternoon Session and Reported Business)

Foreign AffairsParliamentary Procedure
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Dr. Harsha de Silva raised a Point of Order regarding his undertaking to table the COPF verbatim record on discussions about proceeding with the Sri Lanka–Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He said the Hansard record was not yet available, but the video showed that the committee had initially not agreed to proceed and had sought a further review, before later agreeing on the President’s recommendation. He clarified that the delay in tabling the record was procedural and not due to him.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Chairperson, one minute for a Point of Order.

¶ 02 I undertook to table the COPF verbatim record regarding non‑agreement to proceed with the Singapore FTA. Hansard says the verbatim is not yet ready, but the video shows clearly: “We cannot agree. We have to review. This was our policy. We need to once again review to go ahead or not, instead of approving at this time.” Later, after two weeks, on the President’s recommendation, they agreed. The delay in tabling is procedural, not mine. They did not initially agree to move the Sri Lanka–Singapore FTA forward. That is my point. Thank you.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Wednesday, 9 April 2025 ·No. 1747807095041246 ·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
/lk/speeches/3919

Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 9 April 2025. No. 1747807095041246. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/3919