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Comedy of errors: Govt. muddles its own figures
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The Finance Ministry has taken umbrage at last week’s Sunday Times story headlined “Borrowing for four months nears the whole year limit” which reported that the Government had exhausted 96 percent (Rs.1.71 trillion) of its total borrowing limit for 2015 of Rs.1.78 trillion, in the first four months of the year (January to April 2015).
A day after the newspaper hit the streets, the Finance Ministry’s Deputy Secretary S.R. Attygalle called a media conference (on Monday) and said media reports of state borrowing for the first four months of the year were incorrect. He said the actual figure should be Rs. 684,253.41 and that the Treasury bonds borrowing was Rs. 311,706.85 billion not Rs. 811,706.85 million.
The next day, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake told Parliament that the media reports on borrowings were incorrect and presented a table of figures which gave the January-April borrowings as Rs. 577,054.68 (different from the figured dished out by the Finance Ministry the previous day)!
Our reporter states:
On Thursday, June 18 the Government announced its borrowing position up to April 2015 through a Cabinet paper. The details were published on the government website www.news.lk (see table).
The Sunday Times story looked at these figures and found some discrepancy as the total of Rs. 684,253.41 didn’t tally with the Treasury bond figure alone showing Rs. 811,706.85 million. Having done our own calculation based on these published figures and verification from a senior finance ministry official, the figure of Rs. 1.71 trillion was arrived at which may not be the correct figure, as we see it now,However, the figure of Rs. 811,706.85 million as borrowing of Treasury bonds was based on the published table in www.news.lk. This table continued to be published on this website without any change or alteration despite Mr. Attygalle and Minister Karunanayake giving different figures. It was only yesterday that the website altered the figures to Rs. 311, 706.85.
To protect our ‘source’, the Sunday Times on Friday photographed the particular page of news.lk as proof that these figures were in fact by the government (see image).
On Wednesday, Reuters news agency published a totally different set of figures attributing it to data from the Finance Ministry and quoted officials as saying some media had published incorrect figures. (See table)
The table of figures is the same that the Finance Minister presented to parliament but seven out of the eight items (when comparing the figures presented to the Cabinet and the one presented by the minister in parliament) are different.
To make it clearer to our readers, the highpoints of this saga are as follows:
1) June 21 – The Sunday Times reports that borrowings in the January to April 2015 were Rs.1.71 trillion inclusive of Rs. 811 billion as treasury bonds.
2) June 22 – A Finance Ministry official denies the report and says actual borrowings was Rs. 684 billion.
3) June 23 – Minister Ravi Karunanayake tells parliament that borrowings are Rs. 577 billion inclusive of treasury bonds of Rs. 324 billion. (Note: The treasury bonds figure differs from Rs. 311 billion)
4) June 26 (Friday) – www.news.lk continues to publish the treasury bond figure as Rs. 811 billion.5) June 27 (Saturday) – www.news.lk adjusts this figure to Rs. 311 billion which is still different to what the Minister presented to parliament.
While we may have erred on the Rs.1.7 trillion, the sequence of events (or comedy of errors) after the newspaper report appeared reflect on the chaos that has taken place at the Ministry of Finance in the post-election period.