Thilanga on Sri Lanka’s progress in achieving SDGs

A workshop on the critical role of Parliament and Parliamentarians in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Sri Lanka organised by the Parliamentary Select Committee on United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in collaboration with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) was held recently. Parliamentary Select Committee on 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Chairman MP Thilanga Sumathipala made a presentation on Sri Lanka’s progress on achieving SDGs. Here are excerpts of his presentation:

Ayubowan. Let me at the outset thank the Hon. Speaker for being with us this afternoon it being in Parliament the last day and also resolutions going on a very busy day and thank you for coming to grace the occasion of course. Hana from the representative of the UN in SL as well as John Hyatt coming all the day from Australia as our special speaker to conduct the conference for two days and representing the Parliamentary Union. Good to have Alex with us and dear State Minister Niroshan and Members of Parliament, respective invitees of the UNDP and other executive agencies, invitees and other UN agencies and Parliamentary executive staff. 

Well today is a very important and wonderful day. So nice to see the participation level of the members who are here today. It is not easy to find members who are deliberating for three days to four days in Parliament and spending Friday afternoon and who will be with us tomorrow and day after tomorrow. 

Delegated committee on SDGs

When I first went to Dhaka in 2016 the Hon. Speaker wanted me to attend the Speakers forum. That’s where I learnt about the efforts made by neighbouring countries. On my return as usual I had to give a report to him and then I had to report to him. Then I report to my boss at the time the Speaker of Parliament and he said we have to do something about it; what shall we do? So he said put a paper to the party leaders. So we took it up at the party leaders meeting in regard to the SDGs. Then he has decided as Speaker of the House to put it to the Select Committee. 

The Select Committee is the highest committee in the country in Parliament that can delegate for a highest level of inquiry of this nature. So in 2016 we formed a Select Committee of Sri Lankan Parliament Board SDG 2030. We didn’t realise how much of emphasis Sri Lankan Parliament had given at the time. But we went ahead alone with the motion and then we found that we were the first-ever parliament in the world to have a delegated committee on SDGs. That is something that we can be proud of; all of you can be proud of being part of a Parliament that has taken the initiative while all the other countries were talking about it. Then we went into the committee. 

We had a wonderful 12-member committee. So we looked at the areas of concern. Then we decided to have these 17 goals with 169 cadres it’s very difficult to make a momentum. So we in the Select Committee we invited our colleagues to chair sub committees. We call them the clusters. So we formed the four clusters. I am happy to say the first cluster was with regard to sustainable economic growth. So we invited Hon. Niroshan Perera to chair that committee covering SDG 2 8 9 11and 17. So he has to go into that and he had many a meetings within our Government agencies ministries and the next one was cluster two headed by Buddhika Pathirana. Buddhika Pathirana was chairing that committee for healthcare, education, best census for all. So under that cluster we put SDG 4 and 6 which again made lot of contribution for that. 

Then for cluster 3 that was for addressing inequality ensuring social intrusion and protection, we invited Bimal Ratnayake, once again a member of the Opposition. He chaired that subcommittee for SDG 5, 10 and 11. So that committee was also very effective. Then comes to the fourth subcommittee for the cluster for climate change, disaster management and environment protection which was headed by Anuradha Jayaratne. He was the Deputy Minister at that time for the Environment Ministry and he did a wonderful job and that cluster which was responsible for SDG 17, 12, 13, 14 and 15. So all these sub committees clusters started working with the Government agencies and so forth.

So what we found we discussed about the poverty, we all discussed about the years of effort, how we met and how we managed to bring the poverty down from 22% to 16.2%and 8.9, 4.1% so the unemployment from almost 8% down to almost 4% over a period of time. 

Millennium Development Goals

What we realised is though we are talking about it, what we wanted was to go into the nitty-gritty of it. So when we addressed the situation with regard to the findings we found even though we remember how material is coming our way, for example we had the MDGs, all of you are aware about it, that is Millennium Development Goals. That was in the year 2015 in the UN, all of us we are members of it all.

Sri Lanka is no stranger from 2015 to 2030, 15-year development. We have looked at where we were at the MDGs. Certain targets Sri Lanka has achieved very well. Within the expectations. So the mortality rate was 33 down to 100,000. It was very good and then again our primary school enrolment was almost 99% which is significant or fabulous especially in the region and specially we have done that. Then in the illiteracy rate of course 97.5 kind of line of improving. Regarding the ICG part we have done well. 

Then we found then again life expectancy has improved over the last 15 to 20 years from 2000 to 2016. We can say from 69 to 70 years old life expectancy it has gone up to 74.9. It shows that our national health, our national education, whatever said and done, we are continuously investing into that with results. So we wanted to look at all these things. Indications have come to us. We parliamentarians rely on those data. We discus but when we together we spoke to the Census and Statistics Department we only had 28 measurement indicators which they can quantify and give us a report. 

Sustainable Development Goals

When you look at the SDG it has 17,169 cadres. Sri Lanka didn’t have a system of making measurements or gathering data and information. So we had a conference called STG data.lk which was very good and then again the UN came in and UN agencies FBA assisted us like what we are doing today. Of course the UNDP partnered us right throughout the last period on this. Then we found we must have a system where we have a data flow coming into the system.

There are data coming into the ministries sometimes it isn’t used by the government agent or Pradeshiya Sabhas. So some data is collected at the Grama Sevaka division it goes to the Divisional Secretariat, it doesn’t come to the GA. It doesn’t come to the Ministry. So it was all staggered, so were all very happy at the progress made by the Census and Statistics Department. Now they came with 40 different indicators which they came with at the end of this year which is very good. Also there was a different requirement to have a dashboard which is called a software which all the MPs at the grass root level come up to the GC level and then comes to the provincial, the centre. These things are all discussed and pushed. 

I’m happy that Niroshan is here. He is into the Ministry of Policy so he helps me out in pushing it within the Administrative ministerial work line. So seems like the SDG lines tracking system is something we discussed and articulate and pushed from the committee point of view. 

So we are seeing all this and then we found the data is an issue which we are dealing with and at the end of the day we are talking about the SDGs, we are talking about the national plan of action. We want to know where we are and where we want to get. But then the ministries are working hard, they do their research, they push for a budget call and then we found it’s not the case when it comes to real spending of money. 

So in 2017 we had the first meeting with the Secretary to the Finance Minister at the time and we had the first meeting at the Presidential Secretariat. We said we find when it comes to the National Budget for the year 2018 which we are going through now and last year by this time we met the Minister of Finance and Secretary to the Minister of Finance and discussed that it is so important and significant that the ministries and the departments put their budgets and put their estimates before the Parliament alone with the targets of the SGD. 

We had our initiative last year and we are happy to say the Secretary to Finance agreed at that time and initiated and that was going through. This year, early part of this year, we wrote to the President and we managed to inform him ‘look, we have to get this serious’. So the Secretary to the President at that time Mr. Fernando himself wrote a letter to all the agencies, all the ministries, more than 460 agencies in this country, all the ministries, organisations, institutions, he wrote in person and said, ‘we come to June to prepare your budget call alongside the allocation impact for the SDGs’.

Budget allocation vs. alignment

So I just wanted to go through an important slide which is the budget allocation vs. the alignment. I think the next one which is the budget allocation. Before this I think you can see in red, this is what the country would like to achieve against the 17 SGDs, what is in red, but what is in blue is how the money is being spent against the targets that we want to achieve. So I mean there is an alignment. Obviously how much we talk the respective women’s affairs or children or whatever you call it, it is difficult for the ministries to spend that money unless it is being supported by the Treasury. The Treasury will have their constraints. But if you ask for 150 if you get 80, there is work going on alongside with the rebound.

So this particular slide is something very important which every one of us as members of Parliament should take a note of. I will give you one example; if you talk about unemployment in Colombo is the lowest 4.5%. Poverty is 5.1%. Now if you take Sri Lanka as a country we have the poverty is 6.1% so which we are happy. Maybe Rs. 4,500 a month for a person is then what we are looking at the poverty level.

We’ll say we are happy Colombo is only 6.5% or whatever, then we will say Ampara may be less. But we go to Avissawella our poverty level maybe about 17%; then you go to a sub area of a small town, it maybe 27%.

So therefore so as all the other districts wherever we come from so we take the national indicate and then we think the areas are developed but then we as representatives of our people if we know our education, our health care, our poverty level, if we know the true happening of our GN divisions then we can articulate and can form our local people and say look we would like to see in my term I’m going to invest my money, whatever money I get I’m going to put into my schools because we have our education at this level, even though our national level is that, our poverty level is this. 

So our intention is from the committee point of view to make sure we have enough data we can go back to the people and discuss and make sure when the budget allocations are there how it is going to come down the line. It can be from any party it can be from any political representative, it doesn’t matter as long as all of us are representing the people we can have a line of thinking against a measurement. So with this effort, this line of thinking what we are trying to do in the next two days we have a tool kit prepared by INTR Parliamentary Union, of which Sri Lanka is a member. 

This tool kit is done by spending more than two to three years of good hard work globally. So Sri Lanka should be happy that we are articulating or we are sitting together as a parliament and we can’t afford to have 225 people invited. So when we decided and appealed to the Speaker he said let’s invite all the political party leaders to have a delegation of people to come and be part of it. So these are the leaders who are here tonight and we are going to take this back and be partnering the SDG champions, we are going and take it back to the parliament, to the people.

Sri Lanka’s commitment

So when we saw this of having this document that all of us are close to then of course all of us will be part of it. Now when we see the requirement of all of our party intercession into the SDGs. What is a SDG? Why SDG? SDG is not an agenda? SDG is not something which is a UN agenda. It is a global agenda, it is something for us. It is even for developed countries. It’s for everyone. Now we made the first three and a half years volunteer reporting to the UN a few months ago. That is good because only 41 countries have done a volunteer reporting to the UN for an SDG. So when we did that we have shown our commitment as a country to the world. So what that means when it comes to investment, when it comes to any borrowing people are looking at us as a very serious partner, a very serious nation which wants to see things are happening and transforming it together.

So as members of Parliament it doesn’t matter whatever or from wherever we come from, or our political background or our political aspirations. That has to be something different. But this is a very important goal. We believe that all of us have a role to play, the role we have to identify and share in each other and make it better. So the role that all of us can play; each and every member can play in bringing the others around with you, bring the partners, your colleagues with you and drive them through. Then what happens? I don’t think very many can come from the provincial councils without the support of all of you. So you bring them along with the provincial councillors; teach them and take them through with the provincial system. Talk to the Pradeshiya Sabha at the next level of the local government, they should also take down the line with the SDGs.

So if we can look from the nine provinces to 22 districts, 342 Pradeshiya Divisional Secretariats, our problem of 17 Secretariats and to more than 14,000 GM divisions, obviously then we can make sure that we cut our problem of 17 into 17,000, we deal with responsible people and we get the results. It is something we can be a part of and be proud of. All of us are in politics, all of us want to see this country is going to be a better place, we all love to see we are doing well, we want to be proud of our country. We want to feel we are a part of that success. Here we have a chance of being a part of that. Here in Parliament hundreds of thousands of people are working hard. Here we have the executive staff. We have the parliamentarians, we have the Hon. Speaker with us. All of us are committed. So then at the end of two days there will be a document. The document will be compiled to see the commitment and the knowledge and awareness of Parliament of the SDGs. So we take that forward an achievement to the next level. As an example as a good parliament we can always go forward and achieve the next level.

I’m happy that the UN representative said we are a role model which is a very, very happy note. There are things at times not going well, doing well in the country. It’s not only for Sri Lanka, it can happen to anybody. But that doesn’t mean we mustn’t tell our good story. We have to be positive and tell our good side what we have achieved. We have some good stories. We have to tell what we can achieve; what we have achieved. That should be the case. If we are going to only discuss we are not doing well, that we are having an economy problem, we are having this problem, we are having a debt, who is going to come? Nobody is going to come. You can’t borrow anything if you are in debt. So this is something significant.

I’m happy we have Prof. Munasinghe. I couldn’t talk about him. He will be giving a speech on Sunday. He was in charge of the SDG Presidential task committee. He made a beautiful, wonderful policy proposal to the Government headed by the President. Thank you so much. And we have National Economic Counsellor Dr. Lalith Amarakone, economist. He was the youngest doctorate professional we have. We are happy that he is here with us today because these are important professionals needed for this country.

We need to get the professionals to engage with us, advice us, to guide us. This is exactly what the IPU is doing, UNDP is doing and all the professionals are doing to help us to help the country. Let’s make best use of this evening, the best use of all the knowledge others are having, pick their brains, make it a better place be a part of it and now we have made every arrangement with the UNDP sponsorship and also support and it is our call and our responsibility to make the best of these two days. Thank you so much.