The Hon. (Prof.) Anil Jayantha - Minister of Labour and Deputy Minister of Economic Development

¶ 01 Mr. Speaker, there are six main questions with multiple sub-questions. I will provide a concise response.

¶ 02 01. Indeed, poverty data is very important for decision-making and poverty alleviation. In preparing the Budget, we relied on the Department of Census and Statistics’ official monthly and annual poverty lines, HIES 2019, the Multidimensional Poverty Index 2019, and the 2023 Household Survey on the impact of the economic crisis. Release schedules for media and the website have been set, with seven documents to be issued.

¶ 03 02. The HIES will be conducted from January 2025 to January 2026. The summary report is to be released in June 2026 and the final report in August 2026. The last HIES was conducted in 2019.

¶ 04 Sri Lanka conducts a Population and Housing Census every 10 years, enumerating all persons and housing units without omissions or double counts, in four phases: 1. Mapping, 2. Building listing, 3. Enumeration, 4. Data dissemination.

¶ 05 Mapping began in 2017 and was completed in 2020, creating about 88,000 enumeration areas with a GIS. Building listing was successfully carried out from October 2023 to January 2024 and published on 2024.10.31. Enumeration started in October 2024, with Census Day on 19 December 2024 at 00:00 hours. Despite weather-related delays in some districts, 23 districts completed as planned, and data is now at HQ servers undergoing validation. Some delays occurred in Colombo and Gampaha due to access issues; expedited measures are underway. The preliminary report on the enumeration phase is due on March 05, with other reports per the published schedule.

¶ 06 03. Regarding Aswesuma and poverty eradication: mere cash transfers alone cannot eradicate poverty; past cash-based approaches have not eliminated poverty and have sometimes expanded beneficiary numbers. However, until a genuine poverty-exit programme is in place, cash assistance can build confidence and a foundation. Accordingly, Aswesuma proceeds while we develop an integrated, data-driven approach, including digitization and the proposed Sri Lanka UDI project, to unify and improve data accuracy.

¶ 07 We acknowledge issues in beneficiary selection arising from technical problems in the Integrated Welfare Management System and practical problems from human intervention during data collection, including industrial action by field officers and use of external personnel, and the lack of enhanced verification systems. Therefore, an appeal process was provided; over one million who were not selected in the first round submitted appeals, which were reviewed by Divisional Secretariat appeal committees. Additional opportunities were also given; after the new Government took office, about 800,000 further applications were received.