Social Protection in Election Manifestos: Santa Clause in Town before the Christmas?

Herath Gunatilake, Nulakshi Dissanayake, Varangana Ratwatte,

Prashani Senadhilankara, and Hasini Rajapaksa

1. Introduction

As the economic, social, and political impacts of the economic crisis are still unfolding, the nation is facing a crucial presidential election. Most of the major parties and candidates have published their election manifestoes and there are number of assessments published in the print media. This quick assessment focuses mainly on the poverty reduction and social protection in Manifestoes of three potential candidates: Ranil Wickramasinghe (RW), Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and Jathika Jana Balawegaya (NPP).

Sri Lank’s excellent achievements of poverty reduction was reversed by the economic crisis. Poverty levels were increased from 4% to about 30% by 2023 and emerging evidence suggest that poverty is still increasing in the country. Due to a number of reasons Social Protection plays a crucial role during the next five years as the country strive to recover from the crisis. Firstly, Sri Lanka is currently  facing a mass scale poverty and helping the new poor to survive and get back to economically productive life is an integral part of the recovery process. Secondly, while facing tight expenditure control to reduce the budget deficit, a vast amount of money is needed to finance the Social Protection programs. Thirdly, in the event  that poverty has increased since the last assessments, around June 2023, fresh assessments and selection of the beneficiaries are necessary to implement Social Protection programs. Fourthly, the Aswesuma program was financed by international financing agencies and feasibility of continuing the Social Protection program with foreign loans is uncertain. Fifthly, Social Protection programs are marred with corruption resulting high exclusion errors and waste of scarce resources. Sixthly, the economic burden of the Social Protection is enormous as one third or more of the population is in need of government support. Frequent poverty monitoring and proper graduation program should be in place to prevent waste of resources and developing further dependency on government support. Objective of this article is to assess whether the three manifestoes are aligned with the reality, with respect to poverty, in the country.

2. Assessment

This assessment is based on the information provided in the manifestoes and limited to the questions: Do the proposals recognize the importance of economic growth for poverty reduction? Do the proposed social protection programs acknowledge that consumption cash grants like Aswesuma do not necessarily move people out of poverty and are there plans to incorporate poverty alleviation elements to the Social Protection programs? Are there realistic financing plans to implement the proposed social protection programs? How do the proposals deal with exclusion errors? Are there plans for frequent poverty monitoring and graduation?

3. Economic Growth

Crisis driven poverty is quite different from the usual poverty in a country. The approaches appropriate for poverty reduction when poverty levels are very low may not necessarily be sufficient when there is mass scale poverty.  As asserted by many scholars, poverty reduction in a time of crisis with mass scale poverty needs to focus on the economic growth. Redistribution without accelerated growth, as a poverty reduction strategy, is bound to fail in a crisis situation. Does the Manifestos of the three main candidates bring this critical requirement to the forefront? While economic growth is mentioned in all three manifestoes, none of the documents bring the importance of growth for poverty reduction and link that to the necessary reforms. The manifestoes also do not distinguish the crisis driven poverty from the type of poverty existed in the country before the crisis. Ideally, the manifestoes should have recognized the crucial role of  economic growth for crisis driven poverty reduction and elaborate the growth promoting policies of the candidates during their tenure. The lack of explicit reference to economic growth as a means to reduce poverty is a main weakness of all three manifestoes.

• Consumption Support vs Poverty Alleviation

The Samurdhi program has had cash grants and some elements of empowerment to reduce poverty. Aswesuma, on the other hand, is a consumption cash grant program. Given the prevailed situation in 2023, this cash grant to support the poor to survive during the crisis is justifiable. However, continuation with consumption cash grant will not necessarily alleviate poverty and the government cannot afford to provide such grants for a longer period given that it will have to settle its international debts after the grace period. Therefore, the next phase of the social protection program should focus on poverty alleviation and ensure that the scarce resources are spent prudently.

The RW manifesto’s reference to continuation of Aswesuma doesn’t provide any indication about redesigning the program from consumption support to poverty alleviation.  His manifesto states that-low income people suffering from diverse hazards will be reduced to 10% during the next five years. The term “low income” is not well defined and there is no baseline for this target. As some of the recent surveys indicate; if about 60% of the households are poor, achieving this target in the next five years is nearly impossible. If the growth elasticity of poverty is – 2 and poverty rate is 30%, poverty level will come down to about 18% with 5% economic growth in next 5 years. To get down to 10% target, the required economic growth rate is 10%, which is highly unlikely. The growth elasticity of poverty, in absolute term, is most likely less than 2.  Between 2019 and 2022 it was -1.235.

RW’s manifesto has many other empowerment related proposals such as in divisional development programs for extreme poor, the transfer of ownership of low income urban housing to tenants, empowerment of women, youth engagement, modernization of agriculture and supporting fishing communities. The link or the complementary of social protection program and these activities are not clear. In short RW’s manifesto doesn’t have well thought out poverty alleviation strategy that integrates social protection and empowerment.

The NPP proposes a “Prajashakthi” poverty alleviation program for low-income earners and promises to provide a minimum of Rs 10,000 per month for low income households. Again, the category low income is not defined. The manifesto further does not provide details as to whether this is consumption support or does it have elements of empowerments to reduce poverty. Community-based projects, training, technical assistance and financial assistance for low income families to initiate income generation and livelihood projects, and a monthly allowance of Rs. 5,000 to senior citizens are mentioned in the manifesto. Moreover, it proposes support  persons with disabilities, women-headed families, persons with chronic Illnesses, nutrition and health programs, safety and care for children, agriculture and fisheries daily wage earners  and the informal sector. Complementarity between Prajashakthi program and other programs are not articulated well the NPP manifesto.

SJB proposes a new intervention mechanism to make poverty a part of history, implying that SJB government completely eliminate poverty, which is highly un realistic. It will draw on the best practices of “Jana Saviya,” “Samurdhi,” “Aswasuma,” and “Gamidiriya,” and developing a comprehensive new programme. The new program proposes a monthly allowance of Rs. 20,000 for up to 24 months for beneficiary families. Until the new programme launches, Aswasuma will continue with enhanced amounts. SJB Manifesto also has a comprehensive set of poverty alleviation measures including, women and children empowerment, social wellbeing through health, nutrition, indigenous medicine, a midday meal program for schools, expansion of care facilities for the elderly, benefits with enhanced amount to patients of chronic kidney disease, support for disable persons and increased welfare and protecting pension benefits. It also proposes a fuel subsidy program. While the proposed cash grant of Rs. 20,000 is a cash grant or is it based on the differentiated needs of the households are not clear, the SJB manifesto has attempted to integrate the social protection and empowerment under one heading, therefore SJB has done a better job compared to the other two in presenting its social protection program, despite the unrealistic target of elimination of poverty.

• Efficiency:

Samurdhi program was marred with exclusion errors. One of the reasons for changing it to Aswesuma was to minimize the exclusion errors and improve efficiency in targeting households. This however, has not happened and the selection process of Aswesuma had many problems. Recent surveys of CEPA shows that exclusion errors of Aswesuma can be up to 70%, and much higher than even Samurdhi program. What do the manifestoes say about this critical issue? RW manifesto indicates the continuation of Aswesuma and assures that the allocation will not be reduced. It doesn’t recognize the large exclusion errors directly, however    indirectly admit it by assuring that the low income families in the plantation sector will be included in the program. Thus, according to the RW manifesto, the exclusion errors will continue if RW becomes the next president.

The NPP proposes a “Prajashakthi” Poverty alleviation program for low-income earners and promises to provide minimum of Rs 10,000 per monthfor low income households. The NPP manifesto specifically states that it will introduce a participatory, transparent, and efficient beneficiary selection process implicitly recognizing the exclusion errors. The SJB recognizes the importance of Samurdhi programme in reducing poverty in Sri Lanka. Recognizing the major weakness of Samurdhi, it proposes a fresh scientific survey to be conducted before the new programme is implemented. This survey aims to address the mistargeting of beneficiaries in the current programme, ensuring proper support for underserved Samurdhi beneficiaries and those affected by the economic crisis. Thus, of the three SJB and NPP explicitly deals with efficiency of targeting while RW manifesto has not properly recognized the targeting efficiency issue. In terms of clarity and presentation, SJB deals with efficiency issues better than NPP.

• Financial Sustainability:

Allocating funds for Social Protection will be one of the most important challenges of the new presidency. There is no guarantee about continuation of donor funding for social protection. The tax revenue in 2023, was not sufficient to meet the IMF agreed budget targets with all the “so called efforts” of the government. The new government will definitely face daunting challenge of further reducing the budget deficit. Given these, financing a comprehensive social protection program will be the most important constraint faced by the social protection program. Unfortunately, all three manifestoes don’t explicitly mention as to how they finance their social protection programs. Promise during election and forget after coming to power is the usual practice in Sri Lankan politics.  The lack of a financing plan cast doubts about the seriousness of the commitments made in manifestoes about social protection.

• Poverty Monitoring and Graduation Strategy

Frequent poverty monitoring is required to understand the changing poverty dynamics when a country has mass scale poverty. There is no institutionalized mechanism of frequent poverty monitoring in Sri Lanka. Given that there is no digitized data base on household income/expenditure, household surveys are necessary for poverty monitoring. Such surveys are very expensive. For example, a recent survey of 2500 households’ cost about Rs 14 million (Rs. 5600.00 per household). This high costs is after so much of efforts to reduce costs. Therefore, a low cost poverty measurement such as use of electricity consumption to measure poverty is necessary. Such a measure also enables to identify a graduation of household who come out of poverty[1]. The three manifestoes do not provide any information on the need of frequent poverty monitoring.  None of the Manifestoes  have explicit reference on graduation mechanism. NPP however recognizes the need to put the new poor back to productive economic life.

4. Concluding Remarks

This short article assessed three manifestoes by Ranil Wickramasinghe (RW), Samagi Janabalwegaya (SJB) and Jathika Janabalawegaya (NPP). SJB has better integrated consumption Cash grant programs with other poverty alleviation programs whereas NPP and RW has room for better integration of these two aspects of social protection measures. All three have failed however to recognize the importance of economic growth and growth prompting policies as a means of reducing the crisis driven poverty. SJB and NPP has recognized the need to improve efficiency in targeting households in designing their Social protection programs.  The RW manifesto has not recognized this important issue. The need for frequent poverty monitoring is missing in all three manifestoes. The need for proper graduation policy during crisis driven poverty reduction are also missing in RW and SJB manifestoes. NPP implicitly recognize this need .

Appendix table 1 shows various social protection or poverty related promises in Manifestoes. SJB tops in the number of various handouts followed by NPP. The RW make the least number of promises. Living beyond the means for decades resulted the current economic crisis and it seems that “hand out” economy concept is still at work. The most important finding in this quick assessment is that all the three manifestoes failed to explain how do they generate funds for very comprehensive social protection programs proposed in their manifestoes.

CEPA is currently finalizing a study on using electricity consumption for measuring poverty. Preliminary results show that electricity consumption can reseonably predict the poverty.