Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (R) shakes hands with Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe (L) prior to their meeting at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo on April 12, 2017. Wickremesinghe is on an official six-day visit to Japan. Eugene Hoshiko / POOL / AFP
Japan and Sri Lanka have discussed ways and means of accelerating long-delayed Japanese funded project to introduce digital broadcasting to Sri Lanka. The project has been taken up during Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s talks with Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan Yoshihide Suga yesterday (April 12).
A senior spokesperson for Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s Office told The Island that there had been an exchange of views on the project and measures to expedite it.
Funded through JICA, the project was to be launched in the Western Province and the Northern Province in 2011. In addition to digital broadcasting project, the Sri Lankan and Japanese leaders have discussed the maritime security with Sri Lanka reassuring Japan that Sri Lanka wouldn’t in anyway support military activity in the region.Sri Lanka has been also informed of Japan appointing Dr. Hiroto Izumi as Special Representative for Sri Lanka to address development matters.
The Sri Lankan delegation comprised Ministers Dr Sarath Amunugama and Malik Samarawickrema and UNP National List MP Ashu Marasinghe.
Yamaguchi Norifumi, director, International Digital TV Policy, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications during a recent visit to Colombo explained the circumstances leading to the finalisation of the project since it was taken up during Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe’s two-day visit to Colombo in Sept 2014 on the invitation of the then President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Japan and Sri Lanka exchanged notes for soft Yen loan amounting to 13.717 billion for digitalisation of Terrestrial Television Broadcasting Project.
Addressing the media at Ramada Colombo, Norifumi said that in spite of political change in January 2015, they were able to get on with it following talks with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena. Norifumi explained how Sri Lanka could benefit from switching to digitalisation from Analog system.
Had the project got underway as originally discussed in 2009 it could have been fully implemented in 2013, the gathering was told. Sri Lanka was to do away with the Analog system in 2017 in accordance with the overall plan for want of consensus on a suitable system. Even after the exchange of notes in respect of the Japanese funded project, there had been debate about the merits and demerits of the German standards referred to as DVBT-2 and the Japanese standard referred to as ISDB-T being the acronym for Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting.
The Japanese had been quite annoyed over the inordinate delay against the backdrop of an agreement on a soft loan and was seeking a firm commitment from the government of Sri Lanka in that regard (SF)
Source: http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=163547