- Hon. Ravi Karunayake, the Minister of Finance, brought to the notice of the Cabinet that it has been planned to prepare the Budget for the year 2016, with a view to achieving the following objectives:

* to limit the Budget deficit to 5.5% of Gross Domestic Production (GDP);

* to maintain the public investments around 6% - 8% of GDP;

* to encourage the private investments to reach around 22% - 24% of GDP;

* to raise the total investment level of the economy up to 30% of GDP; and

* to achieve an economic growth rate beyond 8% during the Medium Term Framework of 2016 – 2018;

The Government, while successfully achieving the challenge of settling the unsettled liabilities accumulated for a long period, and creating a better treasury management system, has decided to introduce a Zero Based Budgeting Method as a tool of budget preparation and implementation from 2016 onwards. Accordingly, the Cabinet noted that it has been planned to prepare the Budget 2016 allocating the resources based on the sectoral ceilings, and the arrangements have been made to issue the 'Budget Call 2016' incorporating the guidelines and instructions for preparation of this year's Budget and that action will be taken to conduct preliminary discussions with the Ministries regarding the preparation of the Budget 2016 from first week of August 2015 onwards, on the information submitted by Hon. Ravi Karunayake, the Minister of Finance.