PM is legally bound to reveal pre-election budgetary position report before March 23: Mangala

Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who as the Minister of Finance, has the legal responsibility to release to the public a Pre-Election Budgetary position report containing information on the fiscal position of the country before March 23, Former Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said.

Indicating that the Fiscal Management (Responsibility) Act No. 03 of 2003 warrants the Secretary to Treasury to publish a Pre-Election Budgetary Position Report containing details of government revenue and expenditure, details of Government Borrowings within three weeks of the proclamation on the holding of Parliamentary General Election, Mr Samaraweera said that since the Parliament was dissolved on March 2, the report should be released to the public
before March 23, 2020.

“As Finance Minister, I did not pass a Budget in October so as to allow the victor at the Presidential Election to pass their own budget, in accordance with the mandate they received. This is what we did in 2015, when we were a minority government. But this government has not brought a budget. It has not brought a single piece of economic legislation. It has left us all
in the dark,” he said. 

Instead, Mr Samaraweera alleged that it attempted to engage in fiscal ‘jilmart’ using the unheard-of procedure of a supplementary Vote-on-Account. It has also packed the key Parliamentary Committees relating to public finance, COPE and COPA, with members who are part of the Executive. The convention has been to ensure that members of committees, especially those relating to finance, are backbenchers. “This ensures that conflicts-of-interest are limited, helping the committees to perform their watchdog accountability functions effectively,”