The ‘new normal’ budget

The run-up to the 2021 budget which Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, wearing his finance minister’s hat, presented to parliament last week was obviously “new normal” as the post-covid minted cliché goes. There was no dramatic build-up to it with people rushing to buy vehicles, electronics, appliances or whatever as was often the rumor-fuelled case in the past. As has been inevitable in every past budget in the medium, if not the long term, the price of arrack and cigarettes routinely thrashed with a price stick, will go up once more. But nobody knows by how much and smokers and imbibers continue to pay the old price for their bad habits. But they have the certain knowledge that Christmas will soon be over on the authority of the budget speech.

This 2021 budget was crafted, as Dr. Dushni Weerakoon, head of the Institute of Policy Studies, said in a post-budget commentary, “under an exceptional level of uncertainty.” Obviously the crisis measures now in force will remain with us for a long time and it will be unrealistic to assume that fiscal policy will revert to its “pre-crisis setting anytime soon.” This must influence both spending priorities and what Weerakoon called “the slow burn scenario for revenue generation.” It is common knowledge that revenue has already slumped, and not only because of covid and its consequences. Assurances of boosting the country’s growth rate and narrowing the budget deficit, which has for too long burdened the country’s fiscal policy as well as its macro economy, have been repeated. These are old stories that have been heard before and few will buy them.

A persistent criticism of the budget is that it did not say enough about how the government is going to deal with the covid crisis, and the consequences arising from it, by taking the people into its confidence. This, more than all else, is the greatest danger confronting not only Sri Lanka but also the whole world. Neighboring countries is South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have been much more transparent than we with Pakistan even going as far as labeling her next year’s budget as a “covid budget.” Former Central Bank Governor Nivard Cabraal, now the deputy in the finance ministry, who will be the key speaker for the government in the budget debate, has already said at one of the regular remotely held post-budget seminars that the timing was not right for declaring a covid-19 austerity year. But belt-tightening all round will be inevitable. Protecting the very large numbers of daily wage earners and others deprived of their livelihoods by the present crisis must remain high priority. Money printing alone to tide over cannot be the solution. Budgetary provision would have been appropriate.

There was a lot of old wine in new bottles in the 2021 budget speech including self-serving (or should we say government politician serving) measures announced. One of these is the raising of the private sector retiring age to 60-years for both men and women. Currently women working for private employers can retire at 50-years of age and men at 55 and gain access to their EPF benefits. Now both genders will have to wait longer – as many as 10 years in the case of women and five where men are concerned. There is no need to labour the harsh reality that the EPF is the only social security net that private sector workers have for their retirement. Government servants have had their pension benefits from colonial times, a cushion that served them well over a long period and a major attraction of a government job.

This raising of the retirement age of private sector employees also has the undisclosed benefit for the government of slowing EPF payouts and enhancing available funds for government borrowing. We all know that the EPF is the major captive lender to the government and the billions or trillions in its books is always on call for government expenditure. Given the overload of foreign borrowing that has long burdened this country and made the possibility of repayment default an ever-growing risk, postponing the payout of a looked forward to EPF nest egg to private sector employees, confers a substantial benefit on big brother. The private sector generally did not enforce the minimum retirement age rule but allowed employees to formally retire and gain access to their EPF with the assurance of an employment contract to keep them in harness post-retirement.

Let us not forget previous efforts made to convert the EPF to a pension fund that was abandoned due to massive resistance. Even if these attempts succeeded, the new pensioners paid from a contributory scheme – both employer and employee make monthly contributions to the EPF – would not have received the same benefits as their government counterparts enjoying non-contributory pensions. These matters, no doubt, will be raised during the ongoing budget debate which has been abbreviated because of the covid issue. It has up to now been lacklustre with the press and public galleries closed when the prime minister made his budget speech, a necessary precaution in the present context. But it has elicited, as budget debates must do, matters of widespread public interest. One of these relates to Dr. Anil Jasinghe, the previous Director General of Health who was highly regarded for his leadership in handling of the covid emergency. Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi told parliament on Thursday that Jasinghe, currently Secretary Environment, was now attending covid meetings at her ministry. That sounded apologetic to most people not appeased by the suggestion that ‘kicking him upstairs’ was just a promotion issue.

It is clear from the budget that policies of curtailing inessential imports and import substitution would continue and a conscious effort appears to have been made not to heap new burdens on ordinary people for revenue reasons. But the impact of the Goods and Services Tax that has been announced have not yet emerged. It is unlikely that this will not leave people altogether unscathed. And that too not only with regard to their booze and fags.