President to present Budget 2015 today

President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his capacity as the Minister of Finance is scheduled to present his government’s tenth successive budget in Parliament today. It is also incidentally the 69th budget of independent Sri Lanka.

The Appropriation bill for the next year was presented to Parliament on Sept. 26. It was the first reading of the budget.

The Second Reading stage will commence with President making the budget speech today and the debate thereon is scheduled to commence tomorrow. The debate on the Second Reading stage will continue till Nov. 01. The vote on Second Reading stage would be taken at 5.00 pm on Nov 01. The Committee Stage debate on budget 2015 is scheduled to commence on Nov 03 and will continue daily except for Sundays till Nov 24. The final vote of the budget 2015 is scheduled to be taken at 5.00 pm on Nov. 24.

During the budget debate from Oct 25 to Nov 24 (on sitting days) time allocation for oral questions has been scheduled from 9.30 am to 10.30 am and a half an hour from 7.00 pm to 7.30 pm for debate on a question put at the time of adjournment of the House daily.

As per the agreement reached by the party leaders, 45.5 hours have been allocated for the second reading stage debate and 136 hours for the committee stage debate.

Many parties have already hinted that this budget will provide numerous relief programmes to masses.

(Government News Portal)