National Budget leaves tiny space for citizens’ proposals
Public proposals for budget 2017 are pouring into the Finance Ministry in response to newspaper advertisements for representations from citizens while Treasury officials grapple to tackle the massive fiscal deficit, unbearable public debts and adverse trade deficit affecting the country’s economy. The Finance Ministry’s Trade and Investment Department is now sorting out the proposals from the public in addition to numerous other work, ministry officials said. The department is sorting out suitable proposals in various fields relating to social welfare schemes, health and education, management of public sector income and expenditure and the infrastructure development, policy improvements in the area of trade and investment, SME sector and the deployment of the labour force, they revealed.
If these proposals contribute towards increasing the efficiency and productivity further discussions will be held before arriving at a final decision, they added. However the reality is that the inclusion of proposals sent by citizens in previous national budgets has been minimal as most of it is confined to personnel needs of individuals and did not serve the country’s interest or government policy at all, a senior Treasury official told the Business Times. Although one or two citizen’s proposals were incorporated in budgets presented during the last five years, it is around 30 to 50 per cent of proposals submitted by various organisations, trade unions, private sector institutions, the trade chambers, pressure groups and professionals that have been incorporated in previous budgets, official data perused by the Business Times revealed.
According to this data, the department received 1,285 proposals for the 2016 budget which was nearly a five-fold increase when compared with the proposals received for the 2015 budget. The average per year of citizen’s proposals for the budgets presented during the last five years was around 900 although the number of proposals dropped to 257 for the 2015 budget. Data shows that 609 proposals were included in the 2016 budget and of that around 300 had been submitted by various organizations, trade unions, private sector institutions, the trade chambers, pressure groups and professionals.
The ministry will entertain citizen’s proposals for the budget until October 1. “Making ad hoc proposals for 2017 budgets will not solve the country’s economic problems,” former President. National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka (NCCSL) Sunil Wijesinha told the Business Times. “Every budget proposal should be made by carefully analysing with current data covering almost all angles – fiscal, economic, administrative, social, legal,” he said, adding; “We have not seen any of the local organisations or individuals submitting their budget proposals following such a co-coordinated approach”.
Those proposals seem to have been developed to satisfy the requirements of the moment and meet the needs of proponents rather than to fulfill the long-term policy objectives of the government, he added. Mr. Wijesinha has suggested handing over the task of handling and formulating budget proposals to a separate think tank without vesting the responsibility in a few Treasury officials and the Ministry’s Department of Trade and Investment. Tax proposals are considered by the Treasury once a year at budget time during a few hurriedly-arranged consultations with departmental heads, he said adding that it should be done following a proper data analysis with the coordination of revenue collecting departments.