Countries seeking loans should worry about unsustainable infrastructure projects like airports and ports that are empty, said External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, in a sharp riposte to Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen, who asked about whether the Quad countries can offer the same kind of financial assistance that China does.
In an exchange at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Mr. Jaishankar also said India’s ties with China are right now going through a “difficult phase” adding that the state of the relationship stems from “the state of the border”, and China’s transgressions along the Line of Actual Control since April 2020.
“We have seen now countries including in our region being saddled with large debts. We have seen projects which are commercially unsustainable: airports where an aircraft doesn’t come, harbours where a ship doesn’t come,” Mr. Jaishankar told a panel about the future of the Indo-Pacific, in comments that appeared to indicate the debt situation in Sri Lanka, where there have been concerns over the Hambantota port and the Mattala airport, both originally developed with Chinese loans, which Sri Lanka struggled to pay back, eventually having to hand over the port on a 99-year old lease to a Chinese company.
