COLOMBO — China has pledged over $1 billion in new grant money to Sri Lanka after a Chinese luxury real estate project in the capital Colombo was suspended, a Sri Lankan government spokesman said on Wednesday. Chinese companies building a road in a Colombo suburb have also agreed to cut the cost of the $520 million project by 30 billion rupees ($225.73 million), said spokesman Rajitha Senaratnehe, reporting on the results of President Maithripala Sirisena's visit to Beijing last week. The package comes during a cooling period in relations between Sri Lanka and China, the nation's biggest investor, after Sirisena came to power in January and began to rebalance the previous government's foreign policy tilt toward China. China has poured millions of dollars into Sri Lanka's infrastructure since the end of a 26-year civil war in 2009, when Colombo was largely shunned by Western investors because of its human rights record. — Reuters
