Discussion on a ‘basic monthly wage’

A lively open discussion was held on Tuesday at the ‘Hatch’ in Colombo Fort organized by ‘Advocata’ on the topic ‘Should the government give Sri Lanka’s poorest citizens a basic monthly income’.
The idea of a ‘universal basic income’ (UBI) or its variant the ‘basic income guarantee’ is gaining ground as a policy proposal to address poverty and equal opportunity. From the US to Finland to India, ‘free money’ experiments are seeing whether the best way to help the poorest in our society is to simply give money to them directly.
Should Sri Lanka enact a similar proposal? Does Sri Lanka have the fiscal space to implement a basic income guarantee? Is basic income guarantee a moral imperative or is it a moral hazard, were the things that were widely discussed.
On the sidelines of the discussion the Business Times spoke to Dhananath Fernando, Chief Operating Officer, Advocata to find out the concept behind the whole issue.
He said that this is a conversation on Universal Basic Income (UBI) which is now being discussed widely. This is something that is proposed to eliminate the various kinds of subsidies, like the fertilizer subsidy, etc for different sections of the citizens, specially the poorest at the bottom line of the pyramid and they are to be replaced with one payment of a basic monthly income. This is the argument now put across to give everyone a basic income to receive everybody something like Rs 2,000 or 5,000 which could replace the subsidies.
This basic income can be utilized to spend on their basic expenditure.  He said that in India also some proposal to that that effect has emerged to pay around Indian Rs. 6,000 which is equivalent to around Sri Lankan Rs. 15,000.
The suggestion is that this is a one payment you give to everyone even to the richest person. So, it is equal, on a level playing field where everyone at least has money to settle their expenditure and the other argument that is now fielded is “you give only to the poorest people what is affordable”.  In the Sri Lankan context, Mr Fernando said: “A couple of arguments came up were that have becomes politicized.  One government would offer Rs.4,000. Another political party would say offer Rs. 6,000 and then another one would offer Rs. 8,000 and at one point it would become unaffordable for the National Budget”. (Quintus)