The outgoing Minister of Finance Youssef Khalil. (Credit: NNA)
BEIRUT — The Finance Ministry is "committed" to submitting the 2025 draft budget "within the constitutional deadline," outgoing Finance Minister Youssef Khalil announced on Tuesday, calling on all public institutions, organizations, councils and funds that receive financial contributions to submit their draft budgets to the Ministry of Finance by the end of May.
These institutions must attach to their files "all the required supporting documents, statistics and explanations relating to their expenditure and revenue," Khalil's statement explains. "The Accounting Department is ready to discuss these budgets today [Tuesday, May 7]."
Parliament adopted the 2024 national budget in January of this year, not without a heated debate over several articles and several budget riders, — provisions that have nothing to do with the budget but are discreetly integrated into it for adoption.
The budget was accompanied by several adjustments to taxes and levies in alignment with the current exchange rate, decimated in the economic crisis.
The Lebanese government went through all of 2023 without a budget, a common occurrence since the end of the Civil War in 1990.
"The 2025 budget should not impose additional burdens that can be dispensed with or deferred, so as not to create financing needs that exceed the treasury's capacity," Khalil's statement reads.
According to him, this "requires taking austerity measures while accelerating reform and completing what was initiated in the 2024 budget in terms of improving revenues to cover public spending and safeguard financial and monetary stability."
In Lebanon, the Constitution and the law set a precise framework and timetable for the adoption and execution of the State budget. But these rules have been largely disregarded since the Civil War.
The preliminary draft budget is drawn up by the Ministry of Finance, before being approved by the Council of Ministers the year before it is due to be implemented. The draft budget is then forwarded to the Chamber of Deputies, which sends it to the parliamentary committees for examination and possible approval during the regular autumn session — the first Tuesday after Oct. 15. The bill must be passed by the end of January of the year in which it is to be implemented.