Prime Minister Nawaf Salam chairs a Cabinet meeting on Sept. 18, 2025. (Credit: Grand Serail)
BEIRUT — Prime Minister Nawaf Salam's Cabinet met Thursday at the Grand Serail to continue its review of the 2026 draft budget, with the government hoping to complete its study by the end of the week, as announced on Wednesday by Information Minister Paul Morcos.
To meet deadlines, the text must be submitted to Parliament before the opening of the fall session. MPs must then pass it, ideally by end of December or at the latest by end of January.
The budget had already been discussed during government sessions held earlier this week.
“It’s one of the rare times, if not the first recently, that the Cabinet is studying a budget with a view to adopting it within constitutional deadlines,” said Morcos. “Our main concern is the balance between revenue and expenditure in order to avoid any deficit,” he added.
The 2026 draft budget is an adjustment budget that takes into account the country’s limited margin in a context marked by financial and security crises and which postpones major reform initiatives.
The 2026 draft budget forecasts expenditures and revenues equivalent to 505.72 trillion Lebanese Lira (LL), or about $5.65 billion at the current rate of LL89,500 per dollar adopted by the Banque du Liban (BDL, central bank). These amounts represent an 18.2 percent increase compared to the initial 2025 budget forecasts, which were set at LL427.69 trillion, or more than $4.77 billion. These figures were later revised upward in the 2025 finance law, approved at the beginning of March by government decree, to LL445.21 trillion, or $4.97 billion, while Parliament had not yet given its approval for the current fiscal year’s text.
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