Just days after the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe-led government gave the green light to resume construction on the $1.5 billion China-funded Colombo Port City project which was suspended a year back over environmental issues and on grounds that former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had not followed proper procedure while signing the deal with China, the Asia Times reported on March 18, 2016, that Sri Lanka's Deputy Foreign Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva said the six-month-old Sri Lankan coalition government will under no circumstance permit a Chinese military base to be constructed in the country. He said “There is absolutely no such thing and we assure that we will never permit anything like that in Sri Lanka.”