Keeping account of Presidential travels

Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya made a startling revelation in Parliament last week exposing the amounts spent by each head of state in the past decade on travel overseas. At the outset it must be stated that heads of state do need to travel abroad, and the expenses of such travel would naturally exceed the costs of an average individual. However, Sri Lankan leaders have taken foreign travel to a whole other level, converting the State coffers into their private travel agency. 

The fact that these numbers are coming out into the public domain is most welcomed. The fact that the incumbent Government is doing so by its own volition is an even better precedent. Moving forward as this Government matures and times goes by, it should remain committed to its proclamations to reducing Government expenditure. Foreign travel is indeed a good place to start in this regard. 

Prime Minister Amarasuriya disclosed that President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s foreign trips between 2010 and 2014 had cost the taxpayer Rs. 3,572 million. His successor, Maithripala Sirisena spent Rs. 384 million on overseas travel from 2015 to 2019. Gotabaya Rajapaksa spent Rs. 126 million from 2019 to 2022, while President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s foreign travel between 2023 and 2024 cost the state Rs. 533 million.

This one assumes are the costs incurred through the Presidential Secretariat and are numbers not adjusted to inflation or considering the devolution of the rupee against foreign currency in which most of these costs would have been incurred. Expenditure for such trips are incurred by numerous other organisations as well in addition to the Presidential Secretariat. For example, the foreign and defence ministries spend on officials who go as advanced teams or accompany the head of state. There was a time when whole planes were chartered for such Presidential visits. Mihin Lanka or SriLankan Airlines planes were used and the losses for those airlines as a result of aircraft being pulled from their scheduled routes for days on end are not calculated in these costs. Therefore, while the numbers at a glance are staggering the actual costs of these trips are even higher.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa once chartered a flight to New York with a delegation of 207 ministers, spouses, children, priests and officials. Wherever his spouse travelled, she was accompanied by a whole entourage of ‘lady’s maids’ who were tasked to dress her and do her make up. President Maithripala Sirisena famously took his son to the United Nations General Assembly on the taxpayer rupee. President Ranil Wickremesinghe not only flew off to the funeral of the Queen of England with entourage in toe but found it necessary to go for the coronation of the King. All these expenses while the country was going through economic bankruptcy.

It is no secret that President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Maithripala Sirisena and supposedly cosmopolitan Ranil Wickremesinghe were constant ‘pilgrims’ to Thirupathi in South India while they were in office. It would be good to know how much the taxpayers of this poor country had to pay for its leaders to seek favours from divinity. Therefore, the Prime Minister should give a breakdown of each of these foreign trips undertaken by former presidents for the people to assess their actual worth. As those excesses are held to account it should be a reminder to the current administration that the people of this country do not have an appetite for such exuberance at their cost any more. It should also be a constant reminder to anyone in the current administration who may plan to catch a travel bug in the future.