Emir Bachir street, leading to the Grand Serail, Beirut. (Credit: P.H.B.)
BEIRUT — The Ministry of Finance has announced that it forwarded the draft budget for 2023, with amendments approved by the cabinet, to Parliament's General Secretariat, according to a brief statement sent to the press Monday afternoon.
This bill, which is supposed to organize the Lebanese State's public expenditure and revenue over the course of the year, had been approved in mid-August by the caretaker Prime Minister on the basis of a preliminary draft forwarded a month earlier by the Ministry of Finance.
When contacted, the Ministry of Fincance was unable to immediately provide us with a copy of the document due to a computer breakdown caused by generator failure.
The adoption of the 2023 budget should have been completed by January 1, 2023, rendering it over eight months behind schedule.
The draft budget for 2023 was sent to Parliament three days after the preliminary draft budget for 2024 was finalized by the Ministry of Finance and sent to the Presidency of the cabinet.
Since the mid-2000s, Lebanese leaders have systematically voted on the budget outside of constitutional deadlines. The 2022 budget, which was passed in September 2022 and came into force a month and a half before the end of the fiscal year, serves as a recent example.
The 2023 and 2024 budgets, could be voted for in Parliament at the next ordinary session which is due to commence in October. At this stage, it is just as likely that Lebanon's leaders will forget about the 2023 budget altogether (as was the case for the 2021 budget) and decide to vote only on the 2024 budget.
Budgets prepared and voted on by Lebanese leaders in the past have generally been unbalanced and lacking in capital expenditure. Lebanon has been defaulting on its foreign currency debt since March 2020, and is in a similar situation with its debt in lira, which is also reflected in the latest budgets adopted.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.