Only 8% of 2018 budget proposals are progressing according to schedule and the promises doing well include, providing 20,000 housing units for low income families, according to a research by Verité Research, a private think tank.
“At the end of the first six months of 2018, the pace of progress is slow as only 8% of the budget proposals are progressing in line with their targets,” Research Director, Verité ResearchSubhashini Abeysinghe said.
In 2018, the platform by Verité Research has been tracking 38 budget promises amounting to Rs. 149,350 million, which accounts for 82% of all new expenditure proposals in the 2018 budget speech.
“The progress on 33% of proposals is categorized as broken, neglected or undisclosed. This means that the government has not communicated properly the status of the promises amounting to Rs. 60,200 million. The bulk of new expenditure proposals in the 2018 budget (59%) are categorized as lagging in terms of their implementation,” she said. Government’s willingness to share information remains low at 26%. While the government’s progress in implementing its budget promises remains stagnant, its willingness to disclose this information has declined.
In the first half of 2018, information on progress for 74% of the tracked promises was either not available or obtained with difficulty.
“In nearly 60% of the promises being tracked, government institutions failed to provide the action plan or progress report in response to a request filed under the RTI Act. Further, only 33% of progress reports could be compared against the action plans received,” Abeysinghe said.
In the 2018 Budget Speech, the Minister of Finance announced that an implementation unit would be set up under the ministry to monitor the execution of the proposals in the speech. “However, in response to an RTI request, the Ministry of Finance claimed that such a unit does not exist. Yet, in another response, this statement was contradicted by the same ministry,” Team Leader, Economics, Vidya Nathaniel said. “However due to the implementation of the Right for Information Act, information gathering has become flexible.”
The Research identified Megalopolis urban housing project, National Youth Corp, and Fisheries Ministry as some of the best institutions that are implementing budget proposals successfully.
Ministry of Agriculture, Highway projects and some of the education projects were listed by Verité Research as moving at snail pace when it came to implementation of 2018 budget proposals.
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