President Anura Kumara Dissanayake reviewed the final draft of the 2027 Budget at the Presidential Secretariat on Wednesday, a day before he presents it to Parliament in his capacity as Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development.
The completed document was submitted to him by Dr. Harshana Suriyapperuma, Secretary to the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development. Both Daily Mirror and EconomyNext reported the meeting, and both give the same headline allocation: Rs. 2,000 billion earmarked for capital expenditure. That figure matches the capital-spending target reported on 10 November.
The government’s stated framing is a change of phase. Officials describe the budget as moving the national economic focus from stabilisation to expansion and transformative development, and acknowledge that it was compiled against the Ditwah disaster and the Middle East crisis.
”Don’t judge it by who got the most”
Deputy Finance Minister Anil Jayantha Fernando set out the same argument more directly, telling NewsFirst the public should not assess the budget by which ministry received the largest allocation.
The administration’s first two budgets, he said, were built around a single urgent priority — stabilising an economy emerging from one of the most difficult periods in the country’s history. The third, he argued, is meant to do something different.
“For this transformation, we need quality investments, we need to expand the economic engagement, we need to create more and more jobs, we need to expand our production, especially targeting for the export markets, we need to facilitate the devices through which the people can engage in these economic activities, and how best these benefits of the economic engagement would be passed on to the people,” Fernando said.
In practical terms, he said, that points to attracting quality investment, creating jobs, expanding production and exports, and widening participation in economic activity. He added that financial discipline would remain central, with continued efforts to reduce waste and corruption in public spending through 2027.
Fernando also lowered expectations on the elements budgets are usually judged by. Welfare benefits, assistance programmes and possible tax concessions may form part of the package, he said, but should not be treated as its defining features. He described the proposal as a “budget of hope,” intended as a roadmap for gradual economic transformation rather than a one-year ledger.
What happens next
Parliament meets at 1.30 p.m. on Thursday, 12 November, when the President moves the second reading of the Appropriation Bill. The debate runs 26 sitting days, with the second-reading vote on 20 November and the third reading on 14 December — the timetable set out in full here.
Not reported
None of the three filings carries a revenue target, a deficit figure, or any specific tax measure. Daily Mirror’s account carries no reporter byline, consistent with an official statement of the meeting rather than independent reporting of the budget’s contents. The substance of the budget remains unpublished until Thursday afternoon.
