The government has not filled the Treasury so much as failed to spend what it allocated, SLPP national organiser and MP Namal Rajapaksa told Parliament on Saturday, joining the second week of the Budget 2027 debate.

Rajapaksa said the government expects to raise Rs 1,493 billion of the Rs 1,750 billion set aside for capital expenditure through borrowing, Hiru News reported. On those figures roughly Rs 85 in every Rs 100 of capital spending is borrowed, which he said disproves the government’s claim that development is being funded out of money it has saved.

He also argued that money voted to ministries is not reaching the ground, and that leaving allocations unspent withdraws cash from circulation and holds back the economy.

The denominator does not match the Budget

Rajapaksa’s ratio is internally consistent — Rs 1,493 billion is 85.3% of Rs 1,750 billion — but his denominator is not the figure the Budget itself announced. The 2027 Budget put total public investment at Rs 2,000 billion, or 5.12% of GDP, as reported in this desk’s coverage of the railway electrification allocation.

Measured against Rs 2,000 billion, the same Rs 1,493 billion would be about 75%, not 85%. Hiru’s filing does not say which capital-expenditure figure Rajapaksa was using or whether Rs 1,750 billion excludes some component of public investment, and this desk has not reconciled the two.

The Rs 260 billion figure has a different meaning in the Budget papers

Rajapaksa further alleged that Rs 260 billion of the Rs 500 billion allocated for Cyclone Ditwah relief and reconstruction remains unspent.

That figure appears in the Budget record with the opposite sense. When President Anura Kumara Dissanayake tabled a supplementary estimate immediately after the Budget speech on 12 November, he presented Rs 260 billion as additional money still required for 2027 — sought separately from the Budget under Section 16 of the Public Financial Management Act — precisely because the unspent balance carried forward from the Rs 500 billion vote was not enough to finish the work.

Money not yet spent and money still needed are different quantities. No filing states how much of the original Rs 500 billion is in fact unspent; this desk flagged that gap when the supplementary estimate was tabled, and it remains open.

Where his underspending argument is on firmer ground

The broader claim is supported by figures this desk has already reported. Of the Rs 1,380 billion allocated for capital spending in 2026, only about Rs 385 billion — 27.9% — had been spent through the first nine months, two government sources told EconomyNext in October.

His other criticisms

Rajapaksa said the tax structure favours wealthy businesses and called for a formal programme to protect small and medium enterprises, farmers and fishing communities. He said a number of investors already operating in Sri Lanka have left, and that the government should secure those it has before courting new ones. He criticised its handling of growth, inflation and the rupee, and asked it to act within 25 days on relief for farmers, food security, lower electricity and fuel prices, and jobs for young people.

Sourcing note

Among verified newsrooms, Hiru News was the only outlet carrying this speech at the time of writing; searches of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, EconomyNext and Daily FT rails returned nothing on it, and Ada Derana has been unreachable for several days. Budget-debate speeches are routinely split across outlets, so a single carrier is not unusual. The verification above draws on this desk’s own earlier reporting rather than on a second filing.

Not reported

Hiru does not state which Budget line Rajapaksa’s Rs 1,750 billion refers to, name the investors he says have left, or carry any government response.