Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is fac­ing a del­i­cate bal­anc­ing act fol­low­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing the Mid-year Bud­get Re­view.

He says Tan­coo is man­ag­ing in­her­it­ed ar­rears and liq­uid­i­ty pres­sures while sup­press­ing a swollen deficit pro­ject­ed at $9.67 bil­lion along­side a $46 bil­lion con­sol­i­dat­ed fund over­draft and for­eign re­serves of just US$5.2 bil­lion (51 per cent low­er than a decade ago).

These fig­ures, Ar­joon said yes­ter­day, un­der­scored the ur­gent need for de­ci­sive rev­enue mea­sures, mod­ernising the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) to plug col­lec­tion gaps and spend­ing repri­ori­ti­sa­tion to shore up fis­cal buffers.