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Hassan: 2011 budget draft approval 'imminent'

15 May 2010

BEIRUT: Finance Minister Raya Hassan said on Friday that the Cabinet session that was held on Thursday to discuss the 2010 budget was constructive and expressed her hopes to get an approval on the draft very soon to be able to start with the 2011 budget next week.

“Discussions went very smoothly during the Cabinet session that was held yesterday and I think that the budget will be approved very soon because of the absence of technical obstacles that prevent its endorsement unless political hurdles come up unexpectedly,” she said.

Her remarks came during a lunch debate held at Le Bristol Hotel and organized by Lebanon Opportunities magazine.

The Cabinet agreed to postpone discussions on the 2010 draft budget to Wednesday and Thursday after Hassan briefed ministers about the figures and charts in the budget.

“We did not start a detailed debate about monetary and financial policies but some ideas were raised and discussed and we talked about the general guidelines of the budget in addition to discussing some of the numbers included in the draft,” she said.

Hassan said that a new element was added to the 2010 draft budget. “We added a table showing our real expectations of the budget implementation,” she said. She explained further by saying that in the past they used to include some allocations in the budget and then show the deficit that might result in case the amounts allocated were actually spent.

Today, she added, we are including a table showing the financial results and updates every time an amount of money is spent.

“Our main objective is to reach transparency and give a real image of the expenditures included in the budget,” she said.

Hassan considered that it is of a great importance to get an approval on the 2010 budget because Lebanon has been without a budget for over five years and the finance ministry had to allocate money to the ministries based on old budgets.

“My aim was to work toward passing a budget that reflects the Government priorities in the upcoming few years as an indication of the Cabinet’s serious efforts to start the implementation of reforms adopted by its policy statement,” she said.

Regarding electricity, Hassan said that the Government is paying LL 2300 billion to cover the deficit of this sector.

“This amount is huge and does not include the cost of ships aimed at generating 280 additional megawatts of needed power, or the cost of bringing gas from Egypt and the cost of fuel needed to operate the new factory for the production of 600 megawatts,” she said. However, she added, the Water and Energy Minister Jibran Bassil is working on a strategy to try and solve these issues.

Hassan underlined the importance of improving infrastructure in Lebanon in the fields of water, electricity, transport and telecommunications, which will attract more investments to the country and create job opportunities in all of the sectors.

She added that the budget realized the lack of money available for the funding of all the investment expenditures and that’s why it is necessary to resort to the private sector which will help in securing these funds.

She said that she refrained from randomly increasing taxes because she is aware that such a step will affect the Lebanese citizens.

“It would be much better to collect the taxes that are already imposed before introducing new ones,” she said. However, she added, this does not mean that we will not increase the VAT next year.

“We might do that if we found out that additional funding is needed.” – The Daily Star

© Copyright The Daily Star 2010.