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Sunday Dec 22, 2024
Wednesday, 19 October 2022 00:30 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
By Charumini de Silva
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| Cabinet Co-Spokesman and Minister Bandula Gunawardena
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The Cabinet of Ministers approved an additional Rs. 663 billion in borrowing capacity on Monday, pushing this year’s Government's total credit ceiling to over Rs. 4,500 billion.
“For the year 2022, the credit limit approved by the Parliament was Rs. 3,844 billion. However, considering the urgency of the payments that are slated to be settled, it was decided to increase the credit limit by another Rs. 663 billion,” Cabinet Co-Spokesman and Minister Bandula Gunawardane said at the post-Cabinet meeting media briefing yesterday.
The proposal to this effect submitted by President Ranil Wickremesinghe in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, Economic Stabilisation and National Policies Minister was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers.
“Irrespective of who is in power or who runs the administrations, we all have to manage our income and expenditure with the revenue generated as Government taxes.
The situation has even become tougher, as the downward economic growth does not augur well for taxes. The tax collection drops along with the economic decline,” he pointed out.
As per the Cabinet Spokesman, the Government earns about Rs. 150 billion on average per month, but of that Rs. 120.6 billion is spent on State employee salaries and pensions.
“The State Finance Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said Rs. 93.9 billion was allocated for State employees' salaries and Rs. 26.7 billion was for pension. We rotate the money earned from the public as tax to pay salaries for the public. Right now, we do not have sufficient earnings to cover the recurrent expenditure. Hence, it was decided to increase the credit limit for the balanced few months,” he explained.
Claiming that people, either way, scolds the Government for increasing taxes and paying back to its people, he called on experts to come up with suggestions for better managing the Government coffers.
He also said the non-payment for Government contractors has led them into severe financial difficulties. “It was decided to provide guarantee bonds for Government contractors for projects worth over Rs. 100 million as an initial step to resolve the issues. We are also in the process of making the necessary documents to solve problems with contracts worth below Rs. 100 million,” he added.
