External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said that countries should make informed decisions before taking loans from other countries, The Indian Express reported. Jaishankar made the remarks in response to a question from Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister A K Abdul Momen on China during the Munich Security Conference in Berlin.
Momen had asked Jaishankar whether the countries of the Quad grouping – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – could offer the same kind of financial assistance that China gives.
Without naming China, Jaishankar said that it was in the interest of the countries to do their due diligence before seeking out loans.
“We have seen now countries including in our region being saddled with large debts,” Jaishankar said during a panel discussion about the future of the Indo-Pacific region, according to The Hindu. “We have seen projects which are commercially unsustainable: airports where an aircraft doesn’t come, harbours where a ship doesn’t come.”
Jaishankar made the remarks in an indication towards the debt situation in Sri Lanka where projects such as the Hambantota Port and the Mattala airport were funded using high-interest commercial loans from China, The Hindu reported. In 2017, China had acquired the Hambantota port on a 99-year lease as part of a debt swap agreement.
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