The Hon. (Dr.) Harsha de Silva

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I present the Report of the Committee on Public Finance on the Appropriation Bill for the Financial Year 2026 in terms of Standing Order No. 121(5)(i) of Parliament, on the fiscal, financial and economic assumptions used as the basis in arriving at total estimated expenditure and revenue of the Budget, only in the English language with special leave of the House, and the copies in the Sinhala and Tamil languages will be presented as soon as possible.

¶ 02 Ordered to lie upon the Table.

¶ 03 Sir, I am not going to go into the details of this 70-page Report that our Committee compiled.

¶ 04 First of all, I must thank all the Members of our Committee, immaterial of their political party. We worked together to prepare this Report. Also, I extend our appreciation to all the staff who helped us, including the four young consultants. Sir, we have been looking to get these people recruited for a year. We only got them last month and the team is led by Mr. Thilina Panduwawala.

¶ 05 However, Sir, I must say here that the Budget has only provided Rs. 8 million for the Parliamentary Budget Office and Rs. 3 million for Capital Expenditure. That is absolutely insufficient. As you know, the objective of the Committee on Public Finance is as per Article 148 of the Constitution, that we — Parliament — have full control over Public Finance. The Treasury Operations Department, other government institutions and also the Central Bank tell us various things and present various reports and analyses. So, Parliament must have the wherewithal, the capacity to be able to critically evaluate those reports. Unfortunately, we are unable to do that. With Rs. 8 million, what can we do, Sir?

¶ 06 The Parliamentary Budget Office Act was passed in 2023. Sir, I would like to table here the documentations that have already been prepared on the Parliamentary Budget Office: the Organizational Design, the Parliamentary Budget Office Financial Year 2024 Action Plan and the Excel sheet on what our expenses are going to be.

¶ 07 If you are serious about having the Committee on Public Finance and its back office, then, you must actually do it. There is no point in having rhetoric. We have to physically allocate funds to run that office. So, I humbly request you, Sir, and also the Hon. Leader of the House to, during the Committee Stage, relook at the expenditure you have allocated and provide appropriate funds for the Parliamentary Budget Office.

¶ 08 Sir, for the first time, we have actually been able to provide a colour copy of this Report because, then, it is easier to digest what is in it. Essentially, we are looking at assumptions and forecasts. Everything depends on what our assumptions are for the next year. For instance, this year, the assumption was that the nominal GDP will grow by 10.4 per cent and that was supposed to be Rs. 33 trillion. Based on that, various ratios were calculated, but we are going to end up with only Rs. 32 trillion, which means as opposed to the projection of 10.4 per cent, we are only going to have a 7 per cent nominal growth. Inflation was expected to be 5.7 per cent, but it is going to be only 2.4 per cent. So, going into the assumptions for 2025, we noticed that there have been massive discrepancies. Therefore, what we need to do is to ensure that these variations become less and less in future. I am not going to go through most of it, but what we are showing here is that there is an unexpected revenue that the Treasury has collected. No one expected that, even when the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development presented the Budget, that they would collect so much revenue from taxes on vehicle imports. So, that is really what has happened. We have also shown here the Treasury surpluses. There has been quite a bit of discussion on media about the buffer in cash availability of the Treasury.

¶ 09 Therefore, this is a fairly comprehensive, yet summarized version of what we — the Committee — believe to be the situation with respect to the assumptions and forecast made in preparing the Budget for 2026.

¶ 10 And, I expect all Members of this Committee to peruse this Report and perhaps, during the course of the Debate going forward, provide the Committee with any of their observations so that we could incorporate those.

¶ 11 Thank you, Sir.