Treasury buys time by shuffling funds around

The Treasury will shuffle around funds of Ministries to complete some of the existing projects and to allocate funds required to buy medicines until the end of the year, a senior Finance Ministry official said.

Finance Ministry Secretary S.R. Attygalle told the Sunday Times that funds from Ministries which do not have urgent projects would be used to complete urgent functions.

The move came as allocations of funds for some of the sectors were affected due to the disruption of Parliamentary activities in the past three weeks.

Mr Attygalle said funds required for fuel purchases, power generation and the health sector and other urgent purchases would be found from other ministries. Such funds have been allocated to the Health Ministry.

He said if further funds were required for projects such as Road Development Authority (RDA) projects the President would also allocate funds.

He said that for the first three months next year they were planning to submit proposals for a Vote on Account in view of the delay in presenting the annual budget.

The secretary said they would make the proposal based on the annual expenditure for the ministries and submit it to the President to seek cabinet approval. He said that provisions will also be made for the payment of foreign debts.

Prime Minister’s Secretary S. Amarasekara said they would not be able to carry out new projects , but would to continue ongoing projects in the next few months.