ECONOMYNEXT – Most of the money for Sri Lanka state salaries in January have been found though and payments will be made on the 25th, State Minister for Finance Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said.
State workers salaries required 93 billion rupees and 87 billion have been found, Minister Siyambalapitiya said.
Sri Lanka is planning to pay salaries on executive and non-executive grades on two days to help ease cashflows.
“Salaries will be paid on January 25,” he said. “Executive grade salaries would be paid on the same day or the next day.”
The projected revenue for January 2023 is 145 billion rupees and customs and excise department had said collections would be 10 percent below target, he said.
Sri Lanka started to expand the state giving jobs to unemployed graduates under a policy articulated by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna from 2001 to 2004 and was co-opted by ex-President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s ‘Rata Perata’ economic framework to defeat current President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The JVP at the time slammed Wickremesinghe for ‘raj-ya sevaya kappadu kireemer’ (trimming the state service) which was embraced by the urban intelligensia who developed the Rata Perata economic framework.
The urban intelligensia also pushed money printing for stimulus developed by the Cambridge-Harvard economists and are now pushing ‘inflation targeting’ without a floating exchange rate regime.
Inflation targeting with a reserve collecting peg drove the country to serial currency crises, an explosion of monetary instability borrowings and eventual default in 2022.
Total funding for January, inclusive of debt roll-overs is estimated at 625 billion rupees, he said. Domestic debt rollovers are a paper transaction as long the central bank could be kept out auctions by a strict law. (Colombo/Jan24/2023)