Vote on Account to be presented in Parliament

The new government’s Vote on Account for the next four months will be presented to the Parliament today (21).

The Parliament is scheduled to convene at 10.30 a.m. this morning.

Minister of Finance Mangala Samaraweera is slated to present the Vote on Account to the Parliament and the Cabinet of Minister had granted approval for this yesterday (20).

Accordingly, out of Rs 1765 billion, which has been allocated for the first four months of the year 2019, Rs 970 billion has been allotted for debt servicing or interest and premium payment.

This amount is nearly 55 per cent of the total allocation.

Reportedly, monetary provisions have been assigned for ‘Gam Peraliya’, ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’ and ‘One Project for One Village’ projects through this.

In addition, funds have been allotted for increments in the public service, fertilizer subsidies, Samurdhi subsidies, distributing uniform cloths for students.

The Ministry of Finance stated that the Vote on Account has Rs 480 billion proposed for recurrent expenditures, while Rs 310 billion has been proposed for capital expenditures.

A complete budget proposal for the year 2019 would be presented in Parliament in January, the Finance Minister had commented yesterday.

Meanwhile, speculations are rife that fuel prices would be slashed following the reinstatement of the fuel pricing formula.

Meanwhile, a meeting of party leaders headed by Speaker Karu Jayasuriya was assembled yesterday (20).

The discussion had focused on the post of Opposition Leader and the assembling the Parliament Select Committee.

Reportedly, all party leaders have participated in the meeting yesterday, however, they had not reached a conclusion on today’s activities of the 
Parliament.