“Because borrowing exceeded ceiling set by law, to hide them they had been taken off the books and transferred to different places,” Wijesinghe told reporters Wednesday.

“Even I cannot give you a correct number for the national debt.”

Wijesinghe had already disclaimed the 2016 accounts of the Finance Ministry.

He said a Fiscal Management Responsibility Law set up in 2003 had set limits for national debt and deficits and over the last decade through various methods devised during the time of then Treasury Secretary.

The Treasury was then headed by P B Jayasundera, a central banker who was seconded to the finance ministry in the 1990s.

“The Treasury Secretary has done a number of acts to completely destroy (sampoornayen vinasher kirimeeter) financial discipline (moolya vinaya),” he said.

According to central bank provisional data, the national debt was 10,339 billion rupees by end November 2017 he said.

By 2016 the official figure was 8,869 but about 332 billion rupees had been taken off the book. These included 24 billion rupees taken for the Mattala International Airport, 33 and 109 billion taken for Hambantota Port and 116 billion rupees taken for Puttalam Coal power plant.

In the past loans for state enterprises were ‘on-lent’ when borrowed directly by the government.

In addition there were over 100 billion rupees of borrowings by the Road Development Authority from local banks under Treasury guarantees. These were part of 497 billion rupees listed as ‘contingent liabilities’.

The RDA has no revenue to speak of to settle any loan.

The Treasury is now making annual allocations to repay these loans, he said.

The Department of Pensions also appeared to have borrowed over 35 billion rupees from the Bank of Ceylon and Hatton National Bank to pay ‘commuted pensions’, over several years, Wijesinghe said.

These expenses do not appear to be counted as recurrent expenditure in the budget of relevant years, he said, understanding expenses and the budget deficit.

Analysts have also pointed out that loans to RDA, unlike to agencies like the Ceylon Electricity Board which can make profits, were not contingent liabilities, but actual liabilities of the central government which could never be repaid by the road agency out of its own revenues.

The loans are still classified as ‘contingent liabilities’ even when the Treasury has started to pay them back.

Wijesinghe said the ‘grace periods’ of a number of large loans were now starting to end, and instalments will kick in over the next three years, pushing up debt service.

Percapita debt had 417,913 rupees in 2016 from 124,711 rupees in 2006, he said. (Colombo/Feb07/2018)