Government spending on public sector salaries rose 12.0% year-on-year in the first six months of 2026, while pension spending rose 15.3%, according to the Finance Ministry’s mid-year fiscal position report.
Salaries and wages for public servants, including provincial council staff, came to Rs 621.7 billion for January–June 2026, up from Rs 555.1 billion in the same period of 2025, Hiru News reported.
The main driver is the basic salary increase granted to public servants under Public Administration Circular No. 10/2025.
Pension expenditure rose to Rs 240.2 billion from Rs 208.4 billion. The report attributes that increase to a government policy decision to correct pension anomalies affecting people who retired before 1 January 2020.
The wider recurrent picture
A table from the Department of Fiscal Policy, reproduced in the Hiru filing, sets those two line items in a fuller context. Total recurrent expenditure rose to Rs 2,669.9 billion from Rs 2,506.8 billion, and total expenditure including capital spending and net lending rose to Rs 2,946.5 billion from Rs 2,730.7 billion.
The single largest recurrent item remains interest payments, and it moved the other way — falling about 2.4% to Rs 1,234.6 billion from Rs 1,264.6 billion. Capital expenditure and net lending rose to Rs 276.6 billion from Rs 223.9 billion. The 2026 column is marked provisional.
Desk verification
This desk checked the figures rather than reproducing them. The stated percentages follow from the stated rupee amounts — Rs 555.1bn to Rs 621.7bn is 12.0%, and Rs 208.4bn to Rs 240.2bn is 15.3%. The published table also adds up: the four recurrent lines sum to the recurrent total, and the recurrent and capital totals sum to the overall figure, in both years.
The 2025 comparison figures match the previous year’s mid-year report, which recorded salaries of Rs 555.1 billion and pensions of Rs 208.4 billion for the first half of 2025.
Not reported
The filing does not give the number of public servants or pensioners behind the totals, state the mid-year deficit or revenue position, or say how the salary bill compares with the full-year estimate. Readers should note that the mid-year fiscal position report is an annual publication and that percentage figures differ between editions — the 2025 edition recorded a 15.6% rise in salaries and a 10.8% rise in pensions, which are not the figures above.
Single verified source. This is a Finance Ministry data release rather than a breaking event; a search of other verified newsrooms found no separate filing on the same report within the freshness window.
