Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-07-10

Macro - Fiscal Framework for the preparation of the Budget - 2019

- It has been planned to formulate the National Budget 2019 adopting the Performance Based Budgeting approach. In this instance, under the fiscal consolidation programme to be achieved by 2021, the national budget is expected to be prepared in view to achieving the outcomes namely, increasing the Government Revenue to 17 percent of the GDP curtailing the Government Recurrent Expenditure at a level of 15% of the GDP, maintaining the Public Investments at a level of 5.5% of the GDP, restricting the Budget Deficit to 3.5 percent of GDP, maintaining the outstanding Government debt below 70 percent of the GDP, in the Medium Term Public Finance Framework. Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Mangala Samaraweera, the Minister of Finance and Mass Media, to allocate the provisions, identifying the priority projects of the Government, in the preparation of the National Budget of 2019, was approved by the Cabinet.