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by Ravi Ladduwahetty

Minister of Rural Economy and Deputy Minister of Finance Bandula Gunawardena yesterday threw an open challenge to former Minister of Urban Development, Construction, Public Utilities and Sports and Deputy Minister of Finance Mangala Samaraweera for an open television debate on the national economy, especially in the context of the financial imbroglio that the PA has put the country into.

The Minister was responding to a question by a journalist at a news conference held at the Government Information Department auditorium yesterday. The question was about the present state of the economy and claims by former Minister Mangala Samaraweera that the PA Government did not wilfully ruin the national economy and that the real ruin was due to the cascading effects of the Katunayake bomb blast and the World Trade Centre bomb blast in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

"Mr. Samaraweera is entitled to his opinion that he is an expert on finance just because he held the portfolio of Deputy Finance Minister for a few months. If he claims that he is an expert, let him come with all his facts and figures. I will come with mine. We will have a panel of moderators who are university dons on economics," the Minister said amidst ripples of laughter.

It was certainly not these two bomb attacks that led to economic decline. It was gross financial abuse. The damage had been done much earlier, the Minister noted.

There is a distinct difference between the budgeted figures for 2001 and the actual figures for the 2001 budget in that the budget itself was an inaccurate document, he claimed.

Armed with the statistics, he said that the PA took the economy to an all time low since independence and the country had to be content with a negative growth of -0.6 per cent for 2001.

There is a drop in estimated Government revenue by Rs. 30 billion as the budgeted figure was Rs. 264,479 million and the current estimate was Rs. 30.4 billion. The increase in the operating expenditure of the Government was Rs. 9827 million, up from the 281,384 million to Rs. 291,221 million.

The major items which contributed to increase in the operational expenditure of the government are public salaries by Rs 2380 million, interest payments on public debt by Rs. 4282 million, increase in pension payments by Rs. 1593 million, underestimated Samurdhi payments by Rs. 2300 million and the fertiliser subsidy by Rs. 1200 million.

The overall budget deficit which was earlier estimated at 8.5% of GDP was Rs. 123,058 million. It is currently estimated at 10.5 % of the GDP which is Rs.148,139 million.

The shortfall in privatisation revenue is Rs. 16,411 million which is a result of the current estimate being Rs. 8589 million over the previous estimate of Rs. 25,000 million.

Domestic borrowings have also increased from the earlier estimate of Rs. 69,095 million to Rs. 118,095 million. There has been a sum of Rs. 44,599 billion borrowed from the banking system and also Rs. 30 billion from the two State banks.

There are five public enterprises which have accumulated losses to the tune of Rs. 55.8 billion which are: CPC - Rs. 21.5 billion, Rs. CEB- 21 billion, CWE-Rs. 8.3 billion, Railways and Postal Department- Rs. 2.3 billion and CTB- 2.1 million.

"So, with all these facts looming, Mangala Samaraweera is most welcome to hold a live television debate with me if he still thinks that the PA did not ruin the economy," Minister Gunawardena quipped.

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