A budget to boldly go where no Sri Lankan has gone before?

Mangala says sci-fi TV show Star Trek provided inspiration for 2018 budget

The futuristic 2018 budget was inspired by the classic science fiction television show Star Trek, Finance and Mass Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera said at the E&Y post-budget forum.
“In fact, the whole thrust of the budget and the ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’ concept, in fact I remember, when I was a child, my favourite TV show was Star Trek, and the ship was called USS Enterprise, so likewise I thought, if Sri Lanka is to take off, we have to reawaken and re-energize the dormant entrepreneur in most Sri Lankans,” Samaraweera said.

Created in 1966 by Gene Roddenberry, the show centers around the voyages of the starship Enterprise, of its crew, and the charismatic and visionary captain James Tiberius Kirk as they innovate solutions for at times galaxy-spanning problems.

The 2018 budget acts as the first step on the government’s eight-year Vision 2025 plan, not unlike the starship USS Enterprise’s five-year plan ‘to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before’.

However, unlike the exploration of new worlds in Star Trek, the 2018 budget seeks to boldly go back to where Sri Lankans had been in the past, in addition to also boldly going forward.

Samaraweera said that the budget emphasized on market liberalization and globalization since Sri Lanka had thrived on this in the past.

“Historically Sri Lanka, even though those who like to go by the Mahawansa like to think we are a nation based on agriculture, we really are a nation of merchants and traders, and we always in history have excelled when we dealt with the outside world,” he said.

He noted how many historical accounts show Sri Lanka’s goods being demanded by the Caesars in Rome, the Emperors of China and the Pharaohs of Egypt, while the Sri Lankan ruling class consumed goods imported from such destinations.

Samaraweera said that the socialist movements which gained momentum in the 1970s created the currently prevalent closed mindset.

In other ways, the 2018 budget pushes for new envelopes in Sri Lanka’s development, to boldly go where no (or few) Sri Lankan have gone before, with increased government spending, incentives and emphasis attached to research and development, and empowering the Sri Lankan entrepreneurs and youth to embark on cutting edge technological enterprises. 

The question which remains is how Samaraweera’s Kirk-esque idealism for the Sri Lankan economy is implemented. In the Trekverse, the USS Enterprise’s First Officer Spock, a character just as crucial to the plot as Kirk, balances out the idealism with realism, to bring out the best solution.

Samaraweera himself admitted last week that implementing this optimist budget would be challenging.
“One of the challenges we have on the implementation side of things. Especially budgets, of course always sound very promising and nice when they are delivered, but implementing these ideas sometimes are not that successful,” he said.

His solution was to set up a Budget Implementation Unit at the Finance Ministry recently, to be headed by veteran corporate Mano Tittewela and economist Deshal de Mel. Whether these two can fill the big shoes of Spock; to combine the realism of implementation with Spock’s own journey of maturity seen in the popular show, will be tested in the coming year.(CW)

Mano & Deshal to lead budget tracking unit at Treasury 

Samaraweera last week presented the ‘most progressive’ budget, perhaps seen since the late President, J.R Jayawardena’s open market economy budget in 1977 but acknowledged that the “implementation is challenging.”   

Samaraweera acknowledged that although the easy part had been done the difficult part was yet to come. However he said he was setting up a new unit at the finance ministry called, ‘The Budget Implementation Unit’ to closely follow through the proposals during 2018. 

The new unit will be led by the two of the most recent appointees to the Finance Ministry from the private sector; Mano Tittawella, the senior adviser to the Finance and Mass Media Minister and  Deshal de Mel, who joined the ministry as an Economic Advisor to the Minister.

The move was very well received by almost all stakeholders as something similar has not been done in the past. Speaking at the same forum, Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama said that he wished he was 40 years younger to start a business again because he hadn’t seen such a progressive budget since 1977. An accountant by profession, Samarawickrama left the corporate sector in late 1977 to start on his own and later became a businessman.  

However many commentators - both favourites and opposers to the budget - were skeptical of the implementation of many of these proposals presented by Samaraweera. 

However the establishment of a special unit staffed with abled personnel will alleviate these concerns to a certain degree.  Further Samaraweera had made the duo accountable for the implementation as both Tittawella and de Mel are required to present a progress report every month on the status of the implementation which will be made public. 

This move is also a classic example of Samaraweera being bias for action and upholding the spirit of the Right to Information Act; true tenets of a functioning democracy.