Economist urges all citizens to hold the government accountable for public spending

National Budget 2022

by Sanath Nanayakkare

Citizen-driven accountability measures can complement and reinforce conventional mechanisms of accountability, and therefore, ordinary citizens and civil groups should keep an eye on how the public money is spent by the authorities, and step forward to hold the authorities accountable should the need arose, Dr. Roshan Perera, Senior Research Fellow at Advocata Institute said on Saturday.

She made this comment in reply to concerns from the audience dominant with young professionals about weak fiscal consolidation in Sri Lanka.

She was speaking on the topic ‘How Can the Budget ’22 Facilitate Growth?’ where she discussed the role of budget 2022 to steer the economy towards recovery.

“It is the responsibility of the civil society and also the youth of this country to involve in public expenditure tracking in order to contribute to prudent handling of public finances and increased development effectiveness through productive infrastructure and service offerings,” she said.

“Sri Lanka needs more rules-based fiscal consolidation as governments tend to go to parliament and get supplementary budgets approved. We need to have public expenditure limits and if these limits are breached such high spending should be subject to penalty,” she said.

“When a national budget comes up, most of us are concerned about what is in it for us in an individual sense. Will I benefit from the Budget? Will there be any advantage for me? In fact, that should not be the thinking. The citizens have a far more responsible role to play than that, by holding governments to account for their budgetary commitments and proper resource allocations for vital sectors including health, education, transport, energy etc, while maintaining fiscal consolidation as appropriate,” she said.