File photograph: Soldiers of the Sri Lankan army's 56th Infantry Division cultivating paddy in the Tamil homeland
Sri Lanka's National People's Power government's 2027 Appropriation Bill allocates Rs 458 billion to the defence ministry and Rs 230.5 billion to public security, a combined Rs 688.5 billion for the armed forces and the police, against Rs 328 billion for education.
The bill estimates total government expenditure at more than Rs 4,992 billion. The Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who holds the finance portfolio, will present the second reading on 12 November.
Defence rises from Rs 455 billion, an increase of less than one per cent. The sharper movement is in public security and parliamentary affairs, which climbs from Rs 193 billion to Rs 230.5 billion, a rise of more than 19 per cent in a single year.
The largest allocations go to finance, planning and economic development at Rs 856.9 billion, public administration, provincial councils and local government at Rs 651 billion, health and mass media at Rs 590.5 billion, and transport, highways and urban development at Rs 500 billion. Agriculture, livestock, land and irrigation receives Rs 218 billion.
Defence and public security together account for close to 14 per cent of projected expenditure.
Sri Lanka's military remains heavily concentrated in the North-East, seventeen years after the Mullivaikkal genocide which marked the end of the armed conflict. The armed forces are still holding land in Valikamam North, Keppapilavu and elsewhere that displaced Tamil families are still demanding back.
Landowners at Myliddy have now held weekly protests outside the military commander's bungalow for 23 consecutive weeks without a government response, and the deputy defence minister Aruna Jayasekara told parliament in July that 1,661 acres inside the Valikamam North High Security Zone would be permanently acquired rather than released.
The NPP came to power on a platform that included military downsizing. The Sri Lankan president has pledged to reduce the size of the armed forces while recruitment has continued. Previously the military's allocation reached 12.3 per cent of the state budget , and increased military spending through the worst of the economic crisis.
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