The Defence Ministry is considering merging the National Defence Fund and the ‘Api Wenuwen Api’ Fund into the Ranaviru Seva Fund, and has discussed appointing an expert committee to examine whether it can be done.
The proposal was taken up at a special discussion at the Presidential Secretariat chaired by Deputy Minister of Defence Major General Aruna Jayasekara (Retd), Colombo Gazette reported.
The committee would study integrating the two funds with the Ranaviru Seva Fund and other special welfare programmes run for the Tri-Services and other service personnel, and would assess the financial, legal and administrative implications of doing so.
What the merger is meant to achieve
The stated aim is to streamline how assistance is delivered through the funds while widening the pool of service members and their families eligible to receive welfare benefits. No figures were given for the size of either fund, the current number of beneficiaries or the expected increase.
The meeting also took up a separate proposal: financial assistance for armed forces personnel to settle loans taken from financial institutions. Discussions on that were described as preliminary, covering possible mechanisms and the institutional framework that would be needed to deliver it.
Who was in the room
Officials representing Senior Additional Secretary to the President Kapila Janaka Bandara attended, alongside representatives of the Ranaviru Seva Authority, the Attorney General’s Department, the Department of National Budget, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defence.
The presence of the Attorney General’s Department, the Treasury side and the Central Bank points to the scale of the legal and financial questions involved. The National Defence Fund and ‘Api Wenuwen Api’ were each established separately, and merging statutory or trust funds generally requires its own legal instrument — which is consistent with the decision to commission a study rather than proceed directly.
Not reported
The report does not say when the meeting took place, describing it only as held “recently” — so the date of the discussion is unknown. It does not say whether the expert committee has in fact been appointed, who would sit on it, what terms of reference or reporting deadline it would have, or whether Cabinet approval would be required. No figures are given for the assets or annual disbursements of any of the three funds. Nothing indicates the scale, eligibility or cost of the proposed loan-settlement assistance, or where the money for it would come from.
Ada Derana also reported the discussion, but its site has returned a CloudFront block to this newsroom for 14 consecutive days and that account could not be retrieved. No other verified Sri Lankan newsroom appears to have carried the story.
