Harsha reiterates ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’ Fund should be approved by Parliament as statutory fund

The ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’ Fund should be approved by Parliament as a statutory fund, the Chairman of the Committee on Public Finance, Parliamentarian Dr. Harsha de Silva reiterates.

MP de Silva noted that the fund needs to be a legally established fund and therefore it must be brought to Parliament and approved.

He said, “We cannot create funds like ‘Helping Hambantota’ without a proper legal basis. To do something like this, it must be brought to Parliament and approved. That has not been done yet. The ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’ Fund should be established immediately through Parliament.”

Parliamentarian de Silva added, “However, this must be done with proper transparency. In my view, the government alone does not need to do everything. Both the government and the private sector can contribute. The private sector should be allowed to do what it can, and the government should handle what cannot be done by the private sector.”

Meanwhile, the Parliamentarian also noted that a supplementary estimate of Rs. 500 billion should be presented to Parliament in order to rebuild the country.
He stated that the government has sufficient financial reserves for this purpose.

MP Harsha de Silva added, “We have allocated Rs. 1,400 billion for capital expenditure next year—for things like building roads and hospitals. Due to the damage caused by this cyclone, there are funds available to reallocate. I don’t believe that we need to find new money. However, there are day-to-day expenses, such as cleaning houses and related activities, and that will require about Rs. 500 billion in additional spending. That is manageable.”

“There is an IMF condition that limits primary expenditure to 13%, but because of this crisis, we have some flexibility to spend beyond that. Another point is that the government has over one trillion rupees in the banking system,” Chairman of the Committee on Public Finance Parliamentarian Dr. Harsha de Silva added.