📈 Advocata's 5 Fixes: Strategy Over Survival for SL's 2026 Budget

Advocata is calling for the 2026 Budget to abandon "cosmetic fixes" and implement five targeted, credible structural reforms to restore fairness, strengthen revenue, and accelerate growth. • Tax & Revenue: Replace the Port City's sweeping, costly blanket tax exemptions (up to 25 years) with performance-based tax credits. These credits must be tied to verifiable outcomes like job creation or capital investment, addressing Sri Lanka's low corporate tax revenue (2% of GDP in 2023 vs. 5.6% in Malaysia). • Agriculture Innovation: Pass a Plant Variety Protection Act (PVP) to grant breeders IP rights over new seeds. This is essential to unlock private investment in climate-resilient and high-yield crops, boosting sector productivity. • Land & Credit: Accelerate the Bim Saviya land titling program. After 25 years, only 1.1 million of 16 million land parcels are titled. Prioritizing this as an economic reform is critical, as clear titles can raise access to finance by up to 30%. • Trade Competitiveness: Fast-track the phase-out of Para Tariffs (Cess, PAL). The slow pace must be fixed using the Budget to finalize the elimination of Cess on manufacturing by end 2025. Trade openness has plummeted from over 100% of GDP in 2000 to just 63% by 2019. • Fiscal & Social: Modernize social protection. This includes transforming the EPF into a multi-fund system, introducing a contributory pension scheme for new public sector entrants (salaries/pensions consumed 43% of gov't revenue in 2023), and establishing national unemployment insurance.