Selected Advanced Level students aged over 18 would receive a share portfolio worth up to Rs 10,000 before leaving school, under a 2027 Budget proposal aimed at widening participation in Sri Lanka’s capital market.
The programme, titled “A Share for Everyone” and run under the theme “Let’s Know, Let’s Learn, Let’s Invest”, was announced by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake in Thursday’s Budget speech, EconomyNext and NewsFirst both reported.
The participation problem
The Budget document states that the number of people actively trading on the Colombo Stock Exchange is only around 0.7% of the population over 18 years of age.
Under the proposal, Grade 13 students aged 18 and above would be connected to the stock market “in accordance with a formal selection procedure”, according to the Budget text quoted by EconomyNext, receiving portfolios subject to a maximum of Rs 10,000 each.
Funding and the SME listing arm
The Budget also proposes a mechanism to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to list on the CSE, opening a capital-raising route for businesses while broadening the pool of investable companies.
To fund both measures, the Colombo Stock Exchange is expected to contribute Rs 250 million and the government a further Rs 500 million, bringing total proposed funding to Rs 750 million, NewsFirst reports.
Framing
The two newsrooms frame the measure differently. NewsFirst presents it as broadening investment literacy and participation. EconomyNext describes it as a proposal “to boost investment into risky assets of share market” — a characterisation that reflects the well-established volatility of equity holdings, which neither the Budget text nor the government’s own announcement addresses.
The proposal follows the financial literacy thread in the Grade 6 entrepreneurship curriculum reported on 11 November.
Not reported
Neither filing states how many students would be selected, what the selection procedure is, whether the shares carry a holding period or can be sold immediately, who chooses the securities, or what the SME listing support mechanism actually consists of.
