Sri Lanka tourism will bounce back, Like Egypt and Bali

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe yesterday said Sri Lanka was confident of its critical tourism sector recovering from the setback, following the terrorist attack which killed more than 300 people last Sunday.

“Not only us, Egypt has gone through this, Bali had been through it. Tourism will recover, but it is unfortunate for the economy… we have come through many such incidents of terror and war,” Wickremesinghe told NDTV in an exclusive interview in Colombo.

He also said India had shared intelligence inputs with Sri Lanka but there was “some lapse”, “India gave us some intelligence but certainly there has been some lapse,” Wickremesinghe said.

He said Sri Lankan investigators were in touch with several countries, including China and Pakistan, as they probed the strike.

“We have sought the assistance of foreign agencies to place the overseas involvement,” Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said.

The Prime Minister said it was possible that the attacks were a retaliation for the shooting last month for the mosque shootings in the New Zealand city of Christchurch – a theory that has been voiced by one of his ministers.

“But there are some signs the planning for this attack was planned long before it,” Premier Wickremesinghe told NDTV.