Budget deficit deviates from usual; now a declining trend

COLOMBO (News 1st) - The Budget 2019 – themed ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka, empowering the people and nurturing the poor’ was presented to Parliament today (March 05), by Minister of Finance Mangala Samaraweera as the fifth budget proposal of the current government. A noteworthy characteristic is that the proposed budget deficit for this year is comparatively less than the deficit of 2018. The government revenue for the year stands at Rs. 2464 billion while the expenditure stands at Rs. 3149 billion. The estimated budget deficit for 2019 stands at Rs. 685 billion. A sum of Rs. 913 billion has been allocated for the purpose of debt repayment in 2019. Meanwhile, the total state revenue is expected to increase to 15.8% as a percentage of the GDP while the total state expenditure is expected to be 20.2% as a percentage of the GDP. The budget deficit of 2019 is estimated at 4.4% of the GDP. All the figures amount to a gradual reduction in comparison to the figures of the previous couple of years.

---