Sri Lanka, May 6 -- Sri Lanka has managed to trim its budget deficit to 8.3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2023, from 10.2 percent levels in 2022. This is with the government having raised taxes heartlessly and defying any logic to do so in return for a pittance of US$ 2.9 billion bail-out money from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), spread over four years.
In nominal terms it translated into Rs.2,282.3 billion deficit compared to a deficit which wasn't too far at Rs.2,459.9 billion just a year ago during when the economy gutted due to the social and political chaos and also the short lived foreign currency shortage.
In the preceding two years, fiscal deficit soared just like in any other nation on earth as government...