Eran dismisses budget as highly politicised without any inputs from professionals

By Saman Indrajith

The 2023 Budget was akin to a castle in the sky and it was unlikely that the government had listened to any smart bureaucrat when preparing it, Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) MP Eran Wickramaratne said in Parliament on Thursday.

“This is a highly politicised budget. This is not realistic at all, and I wished the government listened officials and experts. Sometime back the tax on a kilo of sugar was reduced to 25 cents and this is still the tax we charge. We lose 57 billion in tax because of this alone. What about taxing tobacco, apparently most of the tax income does not go to the government. Therefore, we need a price formula for tobacco,” he said.

Wickramaratne said that tax revenue is important for the government to maintain the welfare state and manage other expenses. However, this should be done scientifically and that steps should be taken to ensure that the government collects what it is due.

“If we implement a proper formula for tax, the state could easily make another 45 billion rupees. If we increase the withholding tax, the government can make another 200 billion. The state can easily make a lot of money by taxing sugar, tobacco and amending withholding tax rates. This won’t really hurt the people a lot too. We spend 56 billion rupees a year on food and uniforms of the security forces. We must work together to overcome this crisis, or we will become another Argentina,” he said.

In response the state minister for finance, Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said that Sri Lanka for decades has bridged its budget deficits through debt.

“However, we no longer can access debt because we have defaulted. We have to think of new ways to keep going,” he said.