BUDGET BLUES

The people had high hopes for the 2010 Budget. It was during the last Presidential Elections that the President promised to increase the salaries of public servants.
It was also during the same Presidential elections that a slew of promises were given to take a number of steps to reduce the high cost of living.

When nothing happened even after the Presidential elections and when the people were eagerly waiting for fulfilment of those promises, the government yet again promised that all those relief measures would be announced in the forthcoming budget for 2010.

Even before the Budget, the prices of many essential items went skyrocketting. And there were hints in the government controlled media that relief is definitely on way for the consumers who are suffering due to high prices of food items.

But a few independent media were instrumental in letting the public know that whatever it says, the government will be forced to prepare the next Budget as per the dictates of the IMF. And obviously, the government controlled media never mentioned this fact.

The controlled media then started giving massive headlines in their newspapers saying that the Government was not prepared to “betray the country for a few more dollars by agreeing to the unjustified terms of the international community”.

Due to these headlines and the various speeches of the President and the cabinet, the unsuspecting people in Sri Lanka truly believed that the “proud father” i.e. the President would this time prepare a people-friendly budget for “his children” in the country.

Therefore, no one bothered to read through the IMF announcement of 21st May. Actually, the people thought why listen to “foreign uncles” when their own “Father” says things would be alright for them.

This is what the IMF said: The 2010 Budget of the government which aims at reducing the recurrent expenditure and considerably reducing the budget gap, would be presented to the Parliament soon.

Of couse, the government controlled media and other faithful followers in the media, and the general public did not even care to give any thought to that statement from the IMF – since when the “Father” promises something, why listen to “uncles”.

Then the IMF issued another statement on June 28th. It said: The strict implementatioin of this budget would result in revision of taxes and reduction in recurrent expenditure for the period under review, by giving careful consideration to the lapses which occurred in the past financial management.

The IMF statement obviously gave away the budget secrets in advance by clouding it in economic jargon that there will be no relief for the consumers in this budget and instead there will be more taxes and reduction in recurrent expenditure.

It did not stop at that. The IMF issued another statement concerning the Budget for the year 2011.

There will be amendments to tax concessions, increase in excise taxes, expansion of VAT and Income Taxes as part of the Budget for 2011.

In this background, the Minister of Finance (i.e. the President) did not even come to the Parliament to present the Budget speech.

Not only that, he was not even present in the country as he knew very well who the real architect of the Budget was.

But the sad thing is people like Wimal Weerawansa and Champika Ranawaka, who event went to the extent of demonstrating and protesting in front the IMF offices (remember the pledge to “unplug” ?), and those government controlled media, did not know who the real architect of the budget was – or pretended to be so.

So, no wonder the ordinary people were also in the dark as to the true origins of this Budget.

But, those in the know are aware that the real Father of this budget is a foreign Uncle !.