Beijing: China has gifted a warship to Sri Lanka, in the latest sign of its deepening military cooperation with the strategically located island nation in the Indian Ocean.
Also, China's rolling-stock manufacturer has announced that it would shortly deliver nine "new type" of diesel trains to Sri Lanka. The China-gifted frigate 'P625' arrived in Colombo last week.
The Type 053 frigate was commissioned into China's People's Liberation Army Navy in 1994 as the Tongling. The 2,300-tonne warship was decommissioned by the PLA Navy in 2015. The warship has now been gifted to the Lankan Navy.
The Lankan Navy, which played a key role in fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has about 50 combat, support ships and inshore patrol craft with most originating from India, the US, China and Israel.
India last year gifted a coast guard off shore patrol vessel (OPV) to the Lankan navy in addition to providing two OPVs in 2006 and 2008.
The Commander of the Lanka Navy, Vice Admiral Piyal De Silva, thanked China for the frigate and said his forces would take the gift as a suggestion of the good friendship between the two countries, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.