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No move to purchase APCs: Army

28 Mar 2021

No request has been made by the Army to purchase BTR-82A eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers (APCs) as has been reported in some media and the Defence Ministry (MoD) has not received a request to this effect, The Sunday Morning learnt. Unconfirmed reports had said the Government was preparing to purchase 60 APCs. Accordingly, both China and Russia were allegedly competing to provide the APCs while Sri Lanka is supposedly looking at the more expensive APCs from Russia. However, the Army said that they should know if there was a proposal to purchase such vehicles. “There’s no request to purchase APCs, and if there is something like this, we should know, as it goes to a procurement plan. No such request has been made,” Military Spokesman Brig. Nilantha Premaratne said. Meanwhile, MoD Media Co-ordinator Col. Chandima Kumarasinghe said that as far as they are aware, there is no written document to purchase APCs. “Usually, if a request is being made, it should come from that particular service. The aircraft should be requested for fighting purposes by the Air Force. Otherwise, the MoD won’t suggest they buy an aircraft. As far as I’m aware, no such request has been made from the Army to purchase any APCs. No one has made a statement in this regard. We don’t know if there’s any verbal discussion, but there’s no written document in this regard,” he said. Attempts made to contact Defence Secretary Gen. (Retd.) Kamal Gunaratne in this regard were not successful.


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