Sri Lanka Treasury is strictly mentoring and controlling government spending for presidential elections barring state institutions from using is resources and financial allocations for state backed candidate.
Ensuring transparency of government spending, Sri Lanka’s ministries and state institutions have been directed by the Treasury not to use state resources and financial allocations for presidential election campaigns.
A special unit has been entrusted with the task of monitoring and controlling al state funding for election retaliated activities.
Treasury has directed the heads of public authorities, to ensure that these rules are abided by. Public officials and they should be vigilant given the potential legal consequences that could stem from their acts or omissions”.
.At a time of Presidential or General elections, the Finance Ministry is normally under pressure to relax the tight budgetary controls making room for ministries and state institutions to promote ruling party candidates.
Sri Lanka’s upcoming presidential election will eat into public funds running into billions of rupees with increasing government expenditure beyond the control of the Treasury, official sources said.
But this time, the Treasury is strictly monitoring the source of election financing to prevent ministries and state institutions from providing their resources and finances for presidential election campaigns.
In its bid to limit election spending, the Treasury has imposed strict limits on the expenditure for election-related activities including the use of state owned vehicles etc.
Political analysts say elections add up to billions of rupees indirect costs, but also run up massive, uncalculated hidden costs that carve into the country’s future economic growth.
A cap of Rs.50 billion has been imposed on total election expenditure of state institutions directly or indirectly involved in election-related work including the National Economic Council (NCE) and Government Printing Department.
(LI)