The Minister said the same clause was amended by the present government enabling only the Secretary to the Treasury, the Deputy Secretary and the Director General Budget to authorize expenditure from the fund. Therefore, the UNPers could not go on pretending that they were not responsible for this problem,

The government budget had four main components, defence, development and welfare and public investment. All were important subjects and the expenditure on infrastructure was increased by 75 percent while transport investment was increased by 42 percent. The expenditure on welfare was increased by 12 percent. The government continued to play its role as a welfare State and the expenditure on poverty alleviation and payment of pensions had not been ignored by the government.

Though the Opposition accused the government of increasing taxation it had indeed reduced some of the taxes. Cess levied on certain sectors could not be called taxes as the returns from the Cess does not come into the government revenue though 79 percent of the revenue was derived from indirect taxes while 12 percent was derived from direct taxation. Though the prophets of doom in the opposition hung on to the same criticism that the cess on imports would jack up the prices of things like wheat flour and milk powder, the actual impact of the Cess on imports of wheat grain had reduced imports by 50 – 60 percent as consumption of rice had increased.

Ministry of Finance was much more important than the Ministry of Defence and the officials of the Ministry of Finance and its affiliated institutions should set an example for the other institutions since it played a major role among other institutions. If the Ministry of Finance failed to keep up to its responsibilities, it would affect all the other institutions of the public sector, Kegalle District UNP member Kabir Hashim said.

Hashim said the hedging deal on oil purchases was the greatest betrayal of the country and the Treasury, Ministry of Finance and the entire Cabinet was responsible for it. Removing the Chairman of the Petroleum Corporation Asantha de Mel from his position was not a solution. Did the Monetary Board have talks with the relevant officials before the CPC decided on the Hedging deal?

India set an example recently after the Mumbai bomb explosion when Minister S. Patel and defence advisor to the government, Narayanan resigned from their posts and the Sri Lankan minister should resign taking responsibility for the massive loss incurred to the government by this questionable deal he noted.

JVP Colombo District member Sunil Handunnetti said the role of the Treasury under the present government seemed to be collecting taxes and obtaining loans and the budget did not move in the direction of giving incentives or finding strategies to ensure macro economic growth. The services sector may have recorded some percentage of growth but the fact that production sectors like commercial plantations remained dormant.

However, the greater malaise that afflicted the government was the corruption and the expenditure on maintaining 110 ministries that entailed perks and various other expenditure on the ministries. It was an immense burden on the public. Therefore the government was suffering from a disease described in ayurvedic literature as the ‘bagandara’ disease that did not expel faecal matter but badly affected the body making the whole constitution rotten. The amount of taxes defaulted during the past years was a massive 158 billion rupees but the government concentrated on only on 383,365 tax payers out of which about 50,000 were those who paid the PAYE tax. Those who defaulted were big fish but the Inland Revenue Department was not efficient enough to net the those who evaded taxes, he said.

Minister of Trade and Commerce Bandula Gunawardhana said President Mahinda Rajapaksa had to face many challenges at the same time when he assumed power. Defeating the terrorists had come to its final phase while the food crisis cropped up and the oil prices shot up sharply and all these problems were faced while giving employment opportunities to thousands of unemployed graduates. Fertilizer subsidy was given to farmers and the government spent 233 billion rupees as public servants’ salaries.

Whoever assumed power there should be a country left to rule. Therefore the government had allocated a larger percentage of funds for security and it was not a waste but an investment he said,