Finance Ministry receives 875 pre-budget proposals from SL’s private sector
Sri Lanka’s Finance Ministry has received 875 pre-budget proposals and most of them were quite practical, according to Finance Minister Ravi Karunayayake, urging the business community to come up with more proposals to streamline business and transform the country to a financial hub.
Addressing the Malaysia –Sri Lanka Business Council meeting in Colombo organised by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce on the topic of ‘Potential for Investment’ on Tuesday, the Minister said: “With the new budget we will be able to showcase Sri Lanka’s future with financial discipline that is the hallmark of good governance. We want to have an investor friendly business environment in the country and build a strong Sri Lankan industry as our first priority”.
He said local businesses will be given the first preference but noted that local business is also lagging behind as “they do not want to take any additional risk and adopt a wait and see policy”.
The Minister said this is a wake-up call to the private sector and urged them not to wait until everything was delivered at their doorstep.
“We want to show our multilateral agencies and our investors that the government was committed to adhere to fiscal discipline. Sri Lanka’s growth is going to be 6-7 per cent in the coming years and we need foreign investment and technical knowhow coming into the country. Our national policy is based on luring foreign investment. We want to rationalise the tax system and ensure a simple system to be in place.
We also want to ensure clarity as far as the government was concerned. We cannot have one policy today and change it tomorrow to have another policy. Therefore consistency was essential and that will be spelled out in the budget proposals soon,” he said.