The Lebanese Parliament approved the general budget law for the year 2022 with a majority of 63 parliamentary votes, 37 against, 6 abstentions, and 106 out of 128 representatives, in a step designed to satisfy the International Monetary Fund, considering that approving the budget is one of the prerequisites for concluding the agreement with the fund.
Expenditures in the 2022 budget amounted to an estimated 40,873 billion Lebanese pounds, while revenues amounted to 29,986 billion pounds.
The most prominent of what was included in the budget was an increase in the salaries of civil and military public sector employees, retirees, contractors, and all wage-earners in the state, twice the basic salary, provided that the increase was not less than 5 million Lebanese pounds and not more than 12 million pounds.
This is an exceptional increase of limited time pending the final treatment of the salary issue, and it is not counted in the end-of-service compensation or the retirement pension.
The budget’s imports figures were based on calculating the customs dollar at a value of 15,000 Lebanese pounds, as announced by the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, in the plenary session.
Source (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Newspaper, Edited)
