Sri Lanka Budget 2018: Highlights

Sri Lanka Budget 2018, themed “Blue – Green Budget; the Launch of Enterprise Sri Lanka”, envisions on pursuing a Blue–Green Development Strategy, whereby the Government plans to integrate the full economic potential of ocean related activities in formulating the overall growth strategy, and build the economy on an environmentally sustainable development strategy. The Enterprise Sri Lanka initiative is expected to promote entrepreneurial skills and facilitate not only the established private sectors but also the small business enterprises.

A number of measures have been proposed to increase the tax revenue, chief amongst which motor vehicles excise duty and luxury tax revisions, duty revisions on VAT and NBT and introduction of a Debt Repayment Levy. The Government has also proposed several expenditure proposals mainly aimed at developing small and medium sized enterprises. With these initiatives, the Government aims at reducing the budget deficit amounting to 5.2% of the GDP in 2017 to 4.8% in 2018.