Chairman of the Finance Committee, Ibrahim Kanaan, in Parliament. (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — The parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee began examining the 2023 on Monday.
The government approved the draft budget in mid-August and the Ministry of Finance said it had sent the text to Parliament on Sept. 4.
At the end of Monday's meeting, committee chairman MP Ibrahim Kanaan (FPM/Metn) told reporters that the draft was now outdated, given the delay in its adoption. He called on the caretaker cabinet to deliver the 2024 draft budget as soon as possible and to incorporate the measures contained in the 2023 draft.
"The 2023 draft budget that we began examining is outdated. And the committee considers that voting on it [less than 4 months] from the end of its year of execution and without Parliament having passed the settlement law closing the previous year's public accounts is unconstitutional and makes no sense," Kanaan told L'Orient-Le Jour. "We don't want to allow the cabinet to spend and collect its revenues without control."
Not the same situation as in 2022
In 2022, the draft budget for the same year was also submitted by the cabinet with considerable delay, before finally being voted on at the end of September and coming into force in mid-November.
The Parliamentary Finance Committee had examined the text during the summer.
"The committee had already criticized the approach but had to accept the situation given that the following year's draft budget was not ready. But the situation is different this year, given that the cabinet adopted the 2024 draft budget last week and has the opportunity to send it to Parliament within the constitutional deadline," Kanaan.
According to the MP, the 2024 draft has not yet reached Parliament.
According to the normal procedure, the state budget for any given year must come into force before the year of execution or, at worst and if certain conditions are met, at the end of January of that same year.
The Ministry of Finance must send the preliminary draft to the government by Aug. 31 of the year preceding the year of execution. The cabinet must then approve a draft budget and send it to Parliament before the autumn session, which begins in the second half of October.
But Lebanon has repeatedly missed these deadlines since at least the 2000s, as there has been no budget at all. When the 2024 finance bill was adopted a week ago, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati boasted that the cabinet had met its deadlines for the first time since 2002.
Although the draft budget was sent to Parliament on time, its content was criticized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose delegation was in Beirut last week.
In the statement issued at the end of its visit, the Fund said it considered the 2023 draft budget "incomplete" as it "did not [accurately] reflect the real magnitude of the deficit." The IMF recommended that the 2024 draft budget be "consistent with the exchange rate unification process launched by the BDL" and avoid "preferential treatment of some taxpayers over others."
In the same press release, the IMF also criticized Parliament's delay in adopting several reforms listed in the preliminary agreement for the eventual release of a financial aid package, citing in particular amendments to the banking secrecy capital control laws.