The National Budget is IMF influenced, so what? Do we have a choice?

CHEERS and jeers welcomed Sri Lanka’s National Budget 2026. This is normal when the country’s ends are many, but the means are limited. Budget promulgations based on important and urgent priorities, as seen by drivers of national policy, will produce winners and losers.

- By Ronnie Peiris

President and Finance Minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake presents the 2026 Budget in Parliament on 7 November

Although the Opposition is taunting the National People’s Power (NPP) Government about bowing excessively to the requirements of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and not adequately addressing the pressing needs of the low and middle-income citizens of the country, I applaud the focus and determination of the Government to not succumb to the temptation of giving what the country cannot afford to win votes at the upcoming provincial elections. In this light, the Budget represents a profound political and economic statement.

Though largely guard-railed by the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to increase tax collections, align electricity pricing with costs, strengthen social safety nets, implement anti-corruption measures, rebuild external buffers to ensure financial stability and complete debt restructuring with both private and bilateral creditors, I view the National Budget 2026 as one of deliberate abstinence, founded on the conscious refusal to resort to the addictive short-termism of populist measures that have historically defined Sri Lankan politics.

By prescribing the unpleasant but necessary medicine of structural reform, greater tax compliance, institutional cleanup, and reorientation towards productive investment, the NPP is taking a massive political gamble. Although I call it a gamble, it is the right approach. This is the gamble which both Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa refused to take despite the commanding majorities they enjoyed in the Sri Lankan parliament in 2010 and 2020.