Hon. (Dr.) Upali Pannilage - Minister of Rural Development, Social Security and Community Empowerment

¶ 01 Mr. Chairman, I am very grateful for the opportunity to present several points on the Vote of the Ministry of Rural Development, Social Security and Community Empowerment at the Committee Stage of the Budget.

¶ 02 Listening to some remarks from Opposition MPs, one wonders whether we are even in the same country. According to those views, the country is supposedly fully recovered and people are prospering. The primary aim of my Ministry is to eradicate poverty in this country. Some Opposition Members questioned certain data used by His Excellency the President in his Budget Speech. The President, as Minister of Finance, used multiple sources on poverty, including the 2019 Household Income and Expenditure Survey of the Department of Census and Statistics as cited on page 4 of his speech, and World Bank reports. He also stressed that poverty today cannot be grasped through a single, one-dimensional lens, hence the focus on multidimensional poverty alongside the data.

¶ 03 Multidimensional poverty is not measured in the traditional, single-indicator way. It uses three pillars: living standard, education, and health. The “living standard” indicator we traditionally use is only one part; education and health are added to arrive at multidimensional poverty. Using these frameworks and sources, the President presented his views. It is therefore not fair to cherry-pick one metric and criticize.

¶ 04 Our Ministry’s work focuses primarily on three areas. First, rural development. According to the multidimensional poverty profile previously tabled, one out of every six persons is identified as poor, and approximately 95 percent of them live in rural and estate-sector areas. Our Government’s key priority is to end rural poverty, broadly understood beyond the narrow notion of “village.”

¶ 05 Sri Lanka has 14,022 Grama Niladhari divisions. These include traditional villages; low-income and underserved urban and peri-urban pockets; and estate communities in the hill country—many of whom face severe poverty. To address this, the Cabinet has approved and we have launched a new Rural Development Agency. Through it, this year we will prepare village development plans for all 14,022 GN divisions, moving from a top-down flow of projects to bottom-up planning with community participation—gathering and analyzing people’s views and implementing plans that communities co-create. Because we are prioritizing rural development, this Budget allocates Rs. 1,012 million primarily for planning. We also intend to channel about Rs. 500 million previously earmarked for the “Grama Shakthi” programme into this new rural development programme this year.

¶ 06 Second, social security. Certain households and individuals in society need protection: the elderly in low-income families, persons with disabilities, those living with chronic illnesses like kidney disease, single-parent households, and women-headed households. Providing social protection to them is a foremost duty of the National People’s Power Government. Under the President’s Budget proposals, Rs. 749 billion—over 10 percent of 2025 expenditure—has been earmarked solely for social protection.

¶ 07 We accept that accurate data on persons with disabilities are lacking. Therefore, the President has allocated an additional Rs. 100 million to establish a reliable registry of persons with disabilities to ensure needed services reach them at their place of residence. Previously, around 139,000 persons with disabilities received a Rs. 7,500 monthly allowance. From April, we will increase this to Rs. 10,000 and expand coverage from about 139,000 beneficiaries to 410,000.

¶ 08 Caring for the elderly in low-income households is a special responsibility. Extended families traditionally cared for both parents and children. With social change, nuclear families predominate and caring for parents within the household is often difficult. Today, in about 450 elder homes, roughly 10,000 elderly persons—over 6,000 of them women—are being looked after. We will implement special programmes to improve the quality of services in all such care centres, ensure registration, provide staff training, and, where needed, financial support—covering both elder and disability care centres—so beneficiaries receive the highest quality care.

¶ 09 Our policy statement “A Prosperous Country - A Beautiful Life” clearly commits to “a joyful retirement for all.” Hence, much attention in this Budget debate has been on wage increases. By increasing basic pay and annual increments for both public and private sector workers, we aim to lift their pensions upon retirement, giving retirees better means of subsistence. Under our Ministry, the Social Security Fund—particularly the Social Security Board—will implement a strengthened pension scheme for all citizens beginning this year.

¶ 10 We plan to operationalize a contributory pension scheme especially for those in the informal sector, who currently lack formal retirement benefits. While public servants and many private-sector workers have pensions or EPF/ETF, about 2.7 million work in the informal economy. From this year, through the Sri Lanka Social Security Board, we will lay the foundation for a pension mechanism to ensure a dignified retirement for them.

¶ 11 Third, community empowerment. Globally, post–World War II development thinking transitioned from welfare approaches to anti-poverty, equity, and then empowerment approaches. The notion that cash or in-kind benefits alone can lift people from poverty has been shown to be insufficient. Hence, the empowerment approach has gained ground. Using empowerment, our foremost task is to enable nearly two million social assistance households to become self-reliant over the next five years. The Budget sets aside a significant allocation for this, complemented by external support. The Samurdhi Development Department holds roughly Rs. 55 billion, which will be utilized not as handouts but to catalyze self-employment and alternative income streams that truly empower families.

¶ 12 As President D. D. U. J. often highlighted even before assuming office, the critical issue is not how many millionaires or billionaires a country has, but what becomes of its poor. Echoing W. E. B. Du Bois, we will prioritize empowerment of all who suffer poverty and bring them forward. Thank you for the time given.