2015 budget estimates go haywire with erroneous data and records
View(s):The government’s 2015 sunshine budget with some erroneous estimates, data and records is endangering the country’s economy with relation to 77 expenditure proposals mostly for handouts where the financial allocations to be made from Treasury votes for the medium term 2015-2017 provisions, economic experts warned.
Several budget estimates have gone haywire with printing mistakes and miscalculations and Treasury officials were being pressurised to review the whole budget and make necessary corrections and amendments.
Minister of Plantation Industries Mahinda Samarasinghe himself admitted some erroneous data and records when discussing his Ministry vote in parliament this week while giving an assurance that it will be amended and published in newspapers.
Officials of the national budget department had to prepare the 2015 budget hurriedly as its presentation in parliament had been advanced by one month ahead of the normally scheduled date. Eight budget proposals have promised massive unbelievable subsidies for families on income support, salary increments and motor cycles to state workers, fertilizer subsidies and many other concessions.
According to the Finance Ministry budget progress report, out of 112 proposals made in (last year’s presented) 2014 budget, only 32 have been fully implemented so far. 80 proposals are in various stages of implementation.
These 80 proposals should be carried forward for next year along with 77 new proposals made in 2015 budget, a senior government official said, adding that allocating money for it will become a herculean task.
An economic expert who wished to remain anonymous told the Business Times that the country will have to face economic hardships as a result of home grown economic policies, heavy spending on handouts and Central Bank’s minting and printing money next year.
The national balance sheet has been undermined with the amendment made to 2015 budget by increasing expenditure to Rs. 2.168 trillion from the estimate of Rs. 1.812 trillion, up by Rs 356 billion. But according Table V in the summary of the budget the total estimated expenditure was 2.21 trillion.
Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne presented this amendment in a supplementary estimate in parliament in less than two weeks after the budget had been presented in parliament.
No one knows the exact estimated expenditure as there were three different figures in Finance Ministry records and data.