News about Mahinda Rajapaksa

David Cameron, the current Foreign Minister, whose surprise appointment was announced last week, is supporting a controversial new infrastructure initiative called Port City Colombo. This scheme, which includes an artificial 'beach' on nearly 700 acres of reclaimed property beside the capital city, is supposed to make a business mecca such as Dubai or Singapore. Any local people are concerned about the fake beach, but it is nothing more than a façade to attract foreign investors while doing nothing for the country's 22 million residents. Many Sri Lankans are concerned that this glitzy £1.6 billion development will prove to be another white elephant funded by Chinese debt in a world still suffering from Beijing's lavish spending. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka's then-president, initiated the Port City Colombo initiative in 2014. It was taken over by a state-owned Chinese company just three years after it began to pay its debts.