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Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said the second budget of the “yahapalanaya” government was aimed at accelerating growth with social inclusion. Pix by Indika Hnaduwala

Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said the second budget of the “yahapalanaya” government which he presented to Parliament on Thursday was aimed at accelerating growth with social inclusion but as the debate on its merits and demerits got underway, opposition lawmakers tried to blow the lid off what government MPs referred to as a “people friendly budget.”

Over the course of his lengthy budget speech, Minister Karunanayake outlined the government’s vision for the country’s economic growth aimed at achieving far reaching reforms that would propel Sri Lanka to be a strong high-income economy in the Asian region

“The medium term strategy of the government is focused on generating one million employment opportunities, enhancing income levels, developing rural economies, ensuring ownership of land to rural and estate sector working class, the middle class and the public sector employees, thus creating a strongly vibrant much wider middle class. Strong emphasis on all policies and programmes will be placed on the alleviation of poverty in all manifestations beginning 2017,” the Minister said.

While people’s expectations from this budget were rather low in comparison to the previous year when there was a clamour for pay hikes and other perks particularly from employees in the state sector., the low expectations may have led to the somber mood inside the Chamber when Mr. Karunanayake delivered the speech. President Maithripala Sirisena joined other lawmakers in the Chamber to listen to the Budget speech.

On Friday the debate on the second reading of the Appropriation Bill got underway with Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP M.A.Sumanthiran opening the debate. He touched on the subject of social inclusion which he said was vital when economic measures are put in place. However he said an overall scrutiny of the budget showed that that there was more room for social exclusion than inclusion.

“When handling the economy, it is vital to ensure that the citizens live contended lives and know their troubles are shared with all the country. This can only be achieved with real social inclusion,” Mr.Sumanthiran said.

He said that while the budget has spoken of creating more jobs and increasing production in various sectors, it has not been spelled out clearly how these goals would be reached.

JVP MP Sunil Handunnetti was among those in the Opposition who was critical of the Budget saying that it neither contained a vision for the future nor any sound economic policies.

“This is a tax on tax Budget with more burdens heaped on the public who are already reeling with the recent increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT). Now even more taxes have been imposed on the public through this budget. While we understand that taxes need to be imposed to collect government revenue, the already burdened public should not be taxed more,” he said.

However Government members defended the Budget with Minister of Public Enterprises Development Kabeer Hasheem saying that what the country needed were economic polices that moved the country forward and not ones which led to stagnation.

“The country’s economic woes are ones that we inherited from the previous government. We lost many benefits during the previous regime like the GSP. Problems that could have been solved easily were allowed to aggravate and now we have to tackle them,” he said.

The Minister said that it was poor management of the economy by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime that eventually forced the former president to hold an early presidential poll. “The former President knew his government was going bankrupt and the only solution was to call an election,” he said.

UPFP Colombo District (Joint Opposition Group) MP Bandula Gunawardena said the government is talking of attracting foreign investors but was acting in a manner that was detrimental to such a move. ’Recently the Finance Minister criticised the Chinese Ambassador. China is one of the biggest investors in Sri Lanka. With this kind of behaviour how can you attract foreign investors?” he asked.

Mr.Gunawardena also announced that the JO MPs would vote against the Budget.

The vote on the Second Reading of the Budget will be taken on November 18 while the final vote on the Appropriation Bill will be on December 10.