The Hon. Anura Karunathilaka

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, on behalf of the Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Higher Education and Vocational Education, I answer Question 569/2025 on the President’s Fund: Money provided to individuals for higher education.

¶ 02 (a) (i) Funds have been provided from the President’s Fund. As per available information, details on the conditions that were to apply are not available.

¶ 03 (ii) Yes, funds have been provided accordingly.

¶ 04 (iii) All details of funds granted by the President’s Fund for foreign scholarships from 2005 to 2014 and the individuals concerned are set out in the annexure. I table the annexure with the long answer.

¶ 05 Accordingly, funds granted per year are as follows: - 2005: 89 individuals – Rs. 73,435,406.61 - 2006: 102 individuals – Rs. 65,019,897.00 - 2007: 42 individuals – Rs. 33,347,783.00 - 2008: 18 individuals – Rs. 11,055,250.00 - 2009: 4 individuals – Rs. 3,952,906.00 - 2010: 3 individuals – Rs. 3,400,000.00 - 2011: 2 individuals – Rs. 1,600,000.00 - 2012: 2 individuals – Rs. 3,236,238.00 - 2014: 1 individual – Rs. 700,000.00

¶ 06 (iv) Upon audit of the President’s Fund, it is observed that funds have been provided by the Fund to children, relatives and friends of Ministers and Members of Parliament. The other details are in the long document, which I table as an annex.

¶ 07 (v) Based on available information, the Presidential Secretariat does not have data identifying those who returned to Sri Lanka and those who did not.

¶ 08 (vi) As I stated earlier, information on those individuals is not available. Accordingly, as at now, no action has been taken against those who went on foreign scholarships and did not return to Sri Lanka.

¶ 09 (vii) As per available information, no such legal action has been taken.

¶ 10 (viii) Based on the information available, since those who did not return have not been identified separately, no recovery action has been taken of the monies spent on their behalf.

¶ 11 (b) Not applicable.