Engaging citizens in the budget process is a core pillar of a thriving society – nurturing transparency, accountability, and inclusivity. Yet, Sri Lanka wrestles with formidable hurdles in this quest. The 2023 Open Budget Survey gives Sri Lanka a score of 37 out of 100, ranking it 80th out of 125 countries and third in South Asia. As economic pressures rise, a key question emerges: can citizen involvement improve?
The barriers loom large. Budgetary information remains behind a locked door. Public consultations often feel more like mere formalities than genuine dialogue. Marginalised communities remain sidelined, and post-budget accountability is alarmingly weak. However, empowering citizens could spark a transformative change, creating pathways for transparency and equity.
Limited access to budget information
The 2023 Open Budget Survey states that Sri Lanka has “limited transparency”. Government spending plans and outcomes are essential yet remain elusive to many citizens. Details on fund allocations to vital sectors such as health, education, and infrastructure are often unclear, particularly during the implementation stage. Without it, citizens cannot judge if resources flow fairly or effectively.
Public reporting on Government spending post-budget is minimal, with breakdowns lacking detail and spending on specific proposals often difficult to track. Additionally, these reports are highly technical, making it challenging for citizens to understand and engage with the information effectively.
This lack of accountability hampers citizens’ efforts to track public fund use. Weak oversight erodes trust in the budget process, making citizens less likely to engage, as they see little impact from their participation.
Article 20(2) of the new Public Financial Management Act of 2024 could be pivotal in driving positive change. It requires the Government to publish a public-friendly version of the annual budget with an easy-to-understand summary of its key features.
Previous budgets from the Ministry of Finance have included sector-wise breakdowns. If this initiative takes root, it could increase transparency and citizen participation. The lack of access to budget information limits public involvement, making it a significant barrier to meaningful citizen participation.
Weak mechanisms for public consultation
Public involvement in Sri Lanka’s budget process has been quite limited. Consultations often happen, mainly with economists and business leaders. However, the public, especially vulnerable groups, has little influence on budget decisions. Some civil society groups and experts may be consulted, but there is no platform for citizens to share their views.
Marginalised groups, like women and ethnic minorities, often face exclusion in consultations. A study by Ramiz (2018) found that women’s attendance in local budget discussions was low. This highlights greater gender disparities in decision-making.
Vital tasks frequently performed by women for little to no pay, such as maternal healthcare, childcare, and economic empowerment, are often overlooked and underfunded, reflecting broader systemic neglect of issues faced by women.
Rural residents face barriers as well. They lack access to budget information due to poor connectivity, limited availability of documents in local languages, and weak Government outreach, which keep them at bay.
Remote ethnic minorities, including estate workers and communities in conflict-affected areas, struggle to be heard in budgetary decisions that impact their lives, increasing their marginalisation.
Without structured and inclusive consultation processes, participatory budgeting in Sri Lanka is failing. Effective engagement requires more than gathering opinions; it needs the real use of diverse views in decision-making. A transparent, inclusive approach could transform the budget process, making it more responsive and fairer for all citizens.
Low public awareness and capacity
In Sri Lanka, many people fail to perceive how the budget affects their daily lives. This problem grows with low financial literacy and weak Government support. Only 12% knew the national budget’s importance to their lives, which is a serious deficit between citizens and the fiscal choices shaping their lives.
A basic understanding of the budget enables citizens to participate in discussions and hold policymakers accountable. This lack of understanding stifles public inquiries, allowing questionable budget priorities to slip through unnoticed, weakening fiscal oversight.
Limited transparency reduces public accountability, creating space for mismanagement and poor fiscal decisions. Without clarity on how funds are allocated and spent, citizens struggle to hold policymakers accountable, further eroding trust in the budget process. Vulnerable communities often bear the brunt of such inequitable resource allocation.
A critical gap in Sri Lanka’s budget process is the lack of citizen participation during the oversight phase, where public funds are monitored and evaluated for effective utilisation. The absence of accessible and timely audit reports, such as in-year reports and year-end reports, limits citizens’ ability to track how public funds are spent.
This lack of oversight participation undermines accountability and allows inefficiencies and corruption to go unchecked. Strengthening citizen involvement in the oversight phase through timely disclosure of audit reports and creating platforms for public feedback is essential to ensure transparency and improve governance.
If people fail to perceive how Government funds support vital services such as health, education, and infrastructure, they will struggle to connect taxes to these benefits. Without this link, public support for progressive tax reforms weakens, making civic engagement and accountability even harder to achieve.
To tackle this pressing challenge, boosting financial literacy is key. Targeted awareness campaigns, educational initiatives, and user-friendly resources can shed light on the budget process. These campaigns should be led by civil society organisations, media outlets, and educational institutions in collaboration with the Government.
Active transparency measures, including proactive disclosure of budget documents, should be prioritised to ensure that citizens are well informed and able to engage meaningfully. They should clarify the budget’s effects on daily life. Also, simple explanations of complex fiscal policies could boost citizen involvement.
By boosting budget literacy, Sri Lanka can empower citizens, ensuring that they will be able to navigate fiscal decisions and hold the Government accountable for their public funds.
Political and institutional barriers
Political and institutional obstacles stifle citizen engagement in Sri Lanka’s budget process. Centralised fiscal decisions sideline Local Governments, limiting grassroots involvement. The budget remains tightly controlled by central authorities, leaving local voices unheard. This top-down approach robs communities of their power to shape budgets to their needs.
Civil society organisations advocating for budget transparency face bureaucratic roadblocks. Access to decision-making forums is often restricted, hampering their influence on budget policies. Despite their dedication, their role in the budget process is now lesser, leaving public interests underrepresented.
These barriers to inclusivity chip away at effective governance, leading to ordinary citizens and community groups finding themselves on the outside looking in. This causes the gap between Government priorities and community needs to grow, fuelling a cycle of exclusion in fiscal decision-making.
Sri Lanka’s budget process suffers from weak public consultation, hindering genuine citizen engagement, leaving meaningful participation in the dust.
Way forward
Sri Lanka’s budget process faces significant challenges in citizen participation. Key issues are limited information, weak consultations, low awareness, and political barriers. These problems shut out citizens and hurt accountability.
To fix this, several steps need to be taken. First, budget transparency must be improved by publishing easy-to-understand budget documents and detailed reports. Public consultations must be made structured and inclusive, while ensuring that marginalised groups, like women and rural communities, have better representation.
Further, budget literacy must be boosted, with nationwide awareness campaigns and education programmes being launched. Fiscal decision-making must be decentralised, giving Local Governments more power to meet regional needs. Further, post-budget accountability must be improved, with performance reports being published on time and strengthening oversight institutions.
By adopting these measures, Sri Lanka can create a more participatory, transparent, and accountable budget process, empowering citizens and fostering sustainable development.
(The writer is a Programme and Research Officer at Arutha. Arutha is a Colombo-based policy think tank focused on economic research and communication with a special interest in public debt and taxation. Its economic civic education initiative, Default LK, was established during Sri Lanka’s first-ever sovereign default in 2022)