Modi's Sri Lanka visit to expand infrastructure, generate employment

India said on Monday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Sri Lanka this week is aimed at scaling up bilateral investments to expand infrastructure and create jobs for people of the island nation.

"The Prime Minister's visit to Sri Lanka will be a bilateral visit after 28 years. Expanding infrastructure, creating employment in Sri Lanka is way to go. We have had some significant investment projects with Sri Lanka, we are looking to scale that up," Indian Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar told the media.

He added: "We have a broad substantive relation, we want to expand our people to people contact. This is the fourth visit between Sri Lanka and India in a short span, which says a lot. We also want to make travel easy between India and Sri Lanka, the regulations and the mechanisms."

The foreign secretary also said Modi would inaugurate homes built by India in Sri Lanka's northern state of Jaffna for the displaced during his two-day visit on Friday.

"The prime minister will hand over homes built by us in Jaffna for displaced people. So far, we have built 27,000 houses and the ones that are going to be handed over by the prime minister are those houses," he said.