Sri Lanka : Therefore, the Prime Minister said that he has advised to inquire into this and take the financial institution under the Finance Ministry.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe announced this addressing the United National Party (UNP) May Day rally held at the Sugathadasa Indoor Stadium on Sunday.
Speaking further the Prime Minister said the UNP was able to take control of the Samurdhi Ministry which was assigned to the UNP following the recent cabinet reshuffle and has to take steps to correct the mismanagement. If necessary a new mechanism can be formulated to administer the mechanism.
The Prime Minister further said that he received the statistics of the Samurdhi Ministry operations yesterday and Rs. 25 billion has been allocated for the Ministry for 12 months of this year. However, the Ministry has already spent Rs. 13 billion in the first three months of the year.
“Accordingly, 53% of the total money has been spent in three months. It should only spend 25% for three months. So what happened to the money?” he asked.
The Premier pointed out that the Samurdhi Bank is an institution that was not monitored by any institution while other state financial instruments such as Employees Provident Fund, Public Employees Trust Fund are managed under the Finance Ministry. However, there is no regulation to oversee the Samurdhi Bank.
“Therefore, I inquired about this and advised to take it under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance,” he said.
He said all others banks in the country are controlled by the Central Bank, and it is a big problem that only Samurdhi Bank is not under the control of the Central Bank.