The Chairman of the Parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee, MP Ibrahim Kanaan. (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — The Finance and Budget Committee, headed by Member of Parliament Ibrahim Kanaan, and in the presence of Finance Minister Youssef Khalil, held a meeting Tuesday to follow up on the study of the 2022 budget articles.
Here’s what we know:
• The committee approved nine additional articles of the budget, which were reformulated and Tuesday by the Ministry of Finance.
• However, the budget is still awaiting final figures, expected early next week to ensure a “bigger balance between revenues and expenditures,” the committee said in a statement.
• Kanaan demanded “solutions for the public sector, because people cannot pay the price for the collapse of the state and the wrong fiscal and monetary policies. The minimum is required for people to complete their service, and we are working in the hope that we will complete this effort and the correction will begin as of next week, so that the budget can be approved.”
• Kanaan also demanded a “reconsideration of the exchange rate because people cannot pay taxes on the exchange rate of LL 25,000 to the dollar, while the government still pays its employees at LL1,500 to the dollar.”
• He concluded by stating that “an adjustment must be made to revenues and expenditures, so we can move on from a fictitious budget to a realistic transitional budget, and we are working on reforms in the 2023 budget, in the hope of the formation of a government.”