Lebanon’s Ministry of Finance unveiled the growing deficit in 2018’s budget balance and attributed it to weak growth in revenues from imports and large increases in public expenditures, digging the deficit further by $2.15 billion in the third quarter of this year, to stand at $4 billion. This situation reinforces fears that the budget reaches $5.3 billion by the end of the fiscal year, overtaking about 10 percent of GDP, which is estimated to grow at a modest rate of 1.5 percent.
Total deficit stood at $3.96 billion during the first nine months of 2018, against $1.812 billion in the same period of the previous year, registering an increase of 118%. This dramatic gap is a result of a 24% increase in spending, from $9.64 billion to $12 billion, in addition to a 2.4 percent increase in treasury spending, from $ 7.83 billion to $ 8 billion, causing the initial budget deficit to rise from 18.8 percent to 33 percent.
Source: (Al-Shark Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
