Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe seems to have not considered a proposal made by Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) chairman Chandra Jayaratne for a downsize cabinet comprising 19 ministers, where instead, he chose to swear in a Cabinet comprising 25 ministers, 28 project ministers and eight deputy ministers on Wednesday.

Jayaratne had made this proposal to Wickremesinghe, which was also copied to president Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and several other party leaders, two days before the new Cabinet was sworn in before Kumaratunga.

The portfolios in the Cabinet proposed by Jayaratne are 1.Defence; 2.Finance and Planning (Subjects: National economic development, land use and plan implementation); 3.Justice (Subjects:Legislation, judicial infrastructure, constitutional affairs and national integration).

4.Foreign Affairs (Subjects: Foreign affairs and economic diplomacy); 5.Agriculture (Subjects: ‘Non-plantation agriculture,’ plantations, plantation infrastructure, live stock, irrigation and commercial forestry, Mahaweli development and mining).

6.Sea and inland aquatic resource development (including ocean based mineral resources); 7.Trade and industrial development (Subjects: Industries, small industries, competitiveness trade and investment promotion).

8.IT and telecommunication development; 9.Ports, shipping, aviation and tourism development; 10.Inland transport (Subjects: Railways, bus transport, highways, motor traffic and transport regulation).

11. Energy (Subjects: Power, petroleum, renewable energies and energy conservation); 12. Employment relations and human resource development; 13. Education (From pre-school to higher education, including tertiary education).

14.Health and women’s affairs (Subjects: Health, indigenous medicine, medicinal industries, women’s affairs and child care); 15. Human settlement development (Subjects: Housing, water supply, sanitation, urban/rural planning and public utilities).

16. Poverty alleviation and youth affairs (Subjects: Samurdhi, equity, welfare and rural development and disaster preparedness, sports and youth affairs); 17. Home affairs (Subjects: Public administration, parliamentary affairs and governance, provincial and local government administration and police).

18.National heritage (Culture, religion, archealogy, wildlife and forestry reserves and environment) and 19. Rehabilitation and reconstruction. Jayaratne’s view was that a downsized Cabinet would not only be small, but would also be efficient, facilitating rapid economic development. He further says that a small and efficient Cabinet would necessitate the formation of ministries focusing on developing the sectors that hold the greatest prospects for growth as well as integration of linked functions to enable greater coordination among those functions.

‘We believe that this will reduce sub-optimal decisions, expedite decision making and implementation of decisions and reduce operational delays,’ he says. A smaller Cabinet would also improve fiscal management, ‘in view of the urgent need to prune the current account deficit in the national budget.’

Jayaratne says that high fiscal deficits have been common in Sri Lanka and it ‘is customary to curtail the deficit by curtailing capital expenditure.’ He however says that sustaining government capital expenditure is of extreme importance to the country, especially at this juncture to spur economic growth.

Similarly, administration at central, provincial and local government levels should be rationalised to improve efficiency and effectiveness and measures should be taken to reduce wasteful spending and direct those funds for future development activities in the country.

Jayaratne, in his letter, had further said that wherever possible, assignment of portfolios should be based on the core competencies of knowledge, skills and attitudes of the prospectives personalities.

‘We trust that effective leadership, coordination, results driven accountability and performance management would play a pivotal role in assigning ministries to optimise the benefits to the nation,’ says Jayaratne.

In addition, may we suggest that cabinet sub-committees be used to improve focus and better accountability, especially where cross-functional networking and complex projects and strategies are concerned, he adds. (PA)