NNA – Former Deputy Prime Minister, MP Ghassan Hasbani, affirmed in a statement to Parliament following the meeting of the Finance and Budget Committee that “the exceptional situation that Lebanon is experiencing requires a lot of reforms, especially in the public sector and at the financial level, and the budget is at the core of that,” adding: We had several reservations regarding many items at the beginning of the budget, which should be included in separate legal texts because any text that has no effect on the budget figures should not be included in them. We also have reservations regarding the budget approach as a whole, because it is not really reformist.”
He continued, “It is always said that the IMF is very interested in having an approved budget, but no budget is required to raise the threshold, but for it to be feasible, as we have been demanding for years, it must include actual reform articles and reflect their numbers. Until today, most of the proposed articles are ordinary and do not rise to the level of the exceptional situation. Most of them are related to immediate crises, such as corona, and are not related to organic problems.”
Hasbani also expressed his “surprise at the strange answer of Finance Minister Youssef Khalil to his questions, by saying that the budget is corrective, not reformist.”
And he added: “Corrective, that is, correcting the imbalance caused by the situation that occurred as a result of the corona, as most countries of the world are doing following this pandemic, but the reality of Lebanon is not limited to the repercussions of Corona, but rather is experiencing an organic crisis. Therefore, we need a corrective and reform budget that is at the heart of the reform steps that we must take without waiting for the IMF to demand it.”
He continued, “Therefore, we are interested in informing the public regarding our reservations regarding many of the items included in this budget and highlighting items that were not included and should have been included in them, provided that we follow this discussion constructively during the discussion of the budget figures, especially since we do not want to mention fictitious revenues on paper and are not feasible.” For the application to justify the expenses, it suggests to people that the deficit has been reduced in theory while it is increasing in practice because the expenditure has been spent while the imports have not been realized and we are approaching the end of the year. An economic equation that stimulates the economy within an integrated plan of the government that pushes towards economic growth, secures citizens their rights, sets taxes in a positive way, and ensures their equitable collection among citizens.
In response to a question, he replied: “We are not with the authority of anyone to set the customs dollar price, but we are with any price setting included in the budget to know on what basis it was adopted. We are not with a “dollar with fat and a dollar with oil.” Several dollar exchange packages serve as patches that will cause bigger problems in the future.”
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