President Anura Kumara Dissanayake unveiled Sri Lanka’s Budget 2025, focusing on economic recovery, fiscal discipline, and social welfare. The government targets a 5% GDP growth rate, aiming to stabilize the economy after the 2022 financial crisis. Sri Lanka is aiming for tax revenues of 4,590 billion rupees equivalent to 13.9 percent of GDP in 2025 up from 3,705 billion rupees which was at 12.3 percent in 2024. President Dissanayake mentioned that no new taxes are proposed in the 2025 Budget. For 2025, significant revenue gains are anticipated from the liberalisation of motor vehicle imports, effective from this month.
The budget expects a primary surplus of 2.3% of GDP, while Budget Deficit is expected to be 6.7%. The budget allocates 604 billion lankan rupees to Health sector while social security programmes like Aswesuma have been allocated 232 billion rupees.
Public sector salaries will see an increase with minimum salaries increasing by about 15750 rupees, addressing inflationary pressures and improving living standards. The budget also has targeted Foreign investments with projects including development of oil tank farm at Trincomalee.
With Sri Lanka still recovering from its 2022 financial crisis, the budget speech mentioned that a structured plan will be prepared to resume debt repayments by 2028 which includes negotiating with international creditors to restructure its obligations.
Meanwhile, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa criticized the budget, stating that it fails to provide solutions for small and medium-scale entrepreneurs trapped in debt and does not offer a way out of poverty.
He argued that the budget does not support high economic growth through entrepreneurship and that pledges related to the plantation, agriculture, and fisheries sectors have not been fulfilled. opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya MP, Dr. Harsha De Silva has said that the budget does not reflect any significant ideological change from past economic policies. Dr. De Silva raised questions on the policy adopted in the budget by the NPP saying that they had opposed the same for the last 40 years.
