The Treasury is empty

There is no money in the treasury even to cover essential expenditures

Treasury Secretary Mahinda Siriwardena says that the Treasury does not have enough money to cover essential expenditures.

The Secretary also pointed out that the state revenue is not sufficient to incur state expenses and that the amount received as state income is between 145 and 150 billion rupees.

Treasury Secretary also stated that out of that 140 billion rupees per month is spent for state expenditures including 93 billion rupees on government employee salaries, 27 billion rupees on pensions, and 11 billion rupees month on payments of poor people including Samurdhi -elderly allowance and the remaining amount of 10 billion is used for other expenses.

Meanwhile, the Secretary also emphasized that repaying domestic and foreign loans should be paid for which the state revenue is not sufficient and even with reluctance there is no other option but to ask money from the Central Bank.

There is no other alternative and there is a limit to requesting money from the Central Bank as a result of which liquidity problems arise.

The Treasury Secretary also stated that it is possible to take loans from the non-banking sector such as the Employee Provident Fund (EPF) and the Employee Trust Fund (ETF), but even so, a high interest rate of 30 percent has to be incurred.

The Treasury Secretary, while pointing out that finding money to purchase essential items including medicine has become difficult, stated further that the only option left  is to get money from the Central Bank  in the present situation.   

Meanwhile the Governor of the Central Bank, Dr. Nandalal Weerasinghe emphasized that even though the economy of the country remains somewhat at a stable position, the crisis and risky situation still exist.