P. B. wants quarterly reports from state agencies: ‘‘This is all. Manage it.’’

"For seventy years we have had deficit budgets except for one or two years. My fundamental question is if a private company ran 70 years like this, it would have got bankrupt, not even in the books as a company but this country has survived. Does it mean it is a sustainable fiscal path? No," said none other than the

President's Secretary P. B. Jayasundara, speaking at an event this week on the National Budget 2022.

Delivering the keynote address at an event on the Future of the Sri Lankan Economy and organised by the Colombo Development Symposium, Mr Jayasundara stressed the importance of restructuring the country's economy as it was experiencing the worst financial crisis since Independence.

One of those main restructuring needs of the national economy would be replacing the annual warrant of expenditure for all government institutions with a quarterly warrant where every state agency would need to submit reports quarterly and manage their funds within four months accordingly.

"Do not think of the whole year, this is for the first quarter-plan of your expenditure, procurement, hirings, firings and deployments," he said.

Unlike in the past tinkering of budgets with supplementary provisions through amendments to the Appropriations bill, this time the Treasury would present supplementary budgets, which meant, "This is all. Manage it."

On the country’s import and export ratio, Mr Jayasundara stressed that for every dollar from export earnings we were buying twice the amount through imports.