Ranawaka says deficit an undercount

By Saman Indrajith

Sri Lanka was the only country in the world to have waited until it ran out of foreign reserves to seek IMF assistance, SJB MP Patali Champika Ranawaka told Parliament yesterday.

Participating in the Second reading debate on the 2023 Budget, Ranawaka said: “The World Bank officials too have said so. According to them Sri Lanka is the only country in the world to have done so.

Ranawaka said that the 2023 Budget proposals failed to address the current economic crisis. “According to the figures in the document we have an income of Rs 3,456 billion and the projected expenditure is at Rs 7,879 billion. With some more expenses, we’ll have eight trillion expenditure next year. But that is not the truth. Sri Lanka has another financial liability not included in this Budget. We have treasury bills worth 3,800 billion rupees. That is not added to the eight trillion rupees when the calculation is done, nor the President spoke about that liability when presenting the Budget. So the true figure of the financial liability of this government for the next year would be Rs 11,800 billion. This situation could be explained in layman’s terms – when we earn a rupee, we’ll have to pay Rs 3.40. The treasury bills are not counted in the Budget proposals stating some auditing principles,” Ranawaka said.