The issue pertaining to the Chinese fertilizer shipment has finally come to a point to decide whether Sri Lanka would cause a rift for a long-standing friendly nation such as China or to pay off 6.5 million US dollars for technical failures in the system of inspecting organic fertilizer samples, says Chief Government Whip and Highways Minister Johnston Fernando said on Saturday.
Responding to queries by journalists at a ceremony to declare open Kurunegala branch of the Registrar General’s Department, the minister said that investigations would continue to find out how and where the process of inspecting fertilizer samples gone wrong and action would be taken against anyone who had caused the issue that could have been developed into a serious diplomatic embarrassment.
“This is not an issue of the sum of money. This is an issue of an agreement between two countries. The Cabinet of Ministers has decided that there had been a mishap and that we would have to pay for the mishap. We have to consider bigger issues involved and cannot afford to embarrass China which is a long standing friend of this country. We as a government have to keep in mind the interests of people when we make decisions.
“We have experimented with organic cultivation and decided that the government should provide farmers with organic fertilizer. The government made a decision quickly to import them from China. The process of testing the samples had some technical issues and it was decided that fertilizer shipment would not be suitable for us. Those technical errors would be identified and rectified. In any case on an agreement of this nature, we cannot make decisions as a single party. We cannot move forward as a nation by making enemies of our friendly nations,” the Minister said. (NewsWire)