Govt drafting bill to establish separate parliamentary budgetary office – PM

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe says that the Sri Lankan government is now drafting a bill to establish a separate parliamentary budgetary office. 

Addressing the opening ceremony of the Regional Meeting of Young Parliamentarians of the Asia Pacific in Colombo today (25), he also said that the need for a new constitution is recognised all stakeholders. 

“We have a new parliament where we are looking at the changes that have to be made to the constitution and the system of parliamentary government. We have now initiated those changes.” 

He stated that firstly, they will be looking at the role of parliament. “This itself became critical during the last Parliament and before when it was felt that the executive was taking on too much of powers that even the traditionally the role of the backbenchers of the government was being reduced.” 

However, he said that in the country there was a feeling then among most political parties that the Parliament was being “disregarded.” He said that they all had the same feeling that parliament had to be strengthened. 

“Therefore our first decision was to introduce oversight committees into parliament and to strengthen public finance. And with this we have also strengthened the powers of the committees involved with public finance.” 

“And we have introduced the committee on public finance. So with that we are now drafting a bill to establish a separate parliamentary budgetary office,” he said. 

Secondly, is the need for a new constitution, he said. “We went to the presidential election, parliamentary election with different parties getting different mandates. But the need for a new constitution is recognised.”

“So we have constituted the whole parliament as a committee of the whole called the Constitutional Assembly,” he said.