Sri Lanka's budget has gone off track in the first quarter of 2012, with current spending far outpacing tax revenues.

Current spending by Sri Lanka's rulers rose 24.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 to 334.8 rupees, above the annually expected growth of 10.1 percent, while taxes extracted from the people only rose 10.3 percent to 203.0 billion rupees.

Total revenues including non-tax revenues rose only 5.6 percent from a year earlier, against a planned annual increase of 14.4 percent.

For the full year the state hopes to extract 1,000.6 billion rupees in taxes from the people, up an ambitious 23.1 percent from a year earlier.