On Friday, the Lebanese Parliament adopted the draft budget law for 2024 after introducing amendments to it, but experts said that the draft law neglected to include crucial reforms that would help the country emerge from the financial collapse that destroyed the public sector for nearly five years.
The draft law was approved after three days of disagreements, which included many quarrels in the parliament hall with caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, highlighting the deep divisions that have afflicted Lebanese politics and prolonged the presidential vacuum that has been ongoing for more than a year.
The budget, which was amended over months from the version Mikati submitted to the House of Representatives, expected a significant increase in state revenues earned through value-added tax and customs duties.
The budget also included measures that appeared to target those who made illicit gains during Lebanon’s financial crisis, by fining companies that unfairly benefited from the central bank’s former currency exchange platform and traders who used central bank support on imports to make profits.
Economic crisis
Lebanon has been facing a severe financial and economic crisis since late 2019, which caused the seizure of customer deposits, what the World Bank described as the worst crises in the modern era.
The crisis witnessed a decline in the value of the Lebanese pound by more than 98%, amid the absence of stable standards for calculating its exchange rate against the dollar.
Last year, the Central Bank reduced the official exchange rate of the currency from 1,500 liras, which is the price of pegging the lira to the dollar that lasted for decades, to 15,000 liras to the dollar.
The government estimates total financial sector losses at more than $70 billion, most of which are owed to the Central Bank.
2024-01-27 05:03:38
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