The Finance and Budget Committee held a session today, Monday, chaired by MP Ibrahim Kanaan, during which they listened to the caretaker Minister of Finance, Youssef Khalil, regarding the 2023 budget draft. After the session, Kanaan stated: "There was a consensus that the 2023 budget draft was referred at the end of the financial year, outside the constitutional deadlines, and without a final account, making it meaningless. If we want to grant the government a spending allowance, it has spent as it has, and if we grant it a collection permit, it has collected as it has. Is it permissible to approve blankly what it has done, without having its financial accounts as well?"
He also indicated that "the committee decided to demand that the government refer the 2024 budget draft to the Parliament, which should include the necessary rescue and reform vision, and any clause or article that the government considers essential from the 2023 budget draft or outside it can be proposed to us through the 2024 budget draft, if there is enough time in the coming days, or through the discussion that will take place in the Finance and Budget Committee or the general assembly. The Ministry of Finance did not object to that, showing the government's readiness to do so."
Kanaan continued: "We do not close the door on any necessary legal article in the government's view that is approved by the Parliament. However, we cannot continue the series of approving budgets at the end of the financial year, as this would amount to legalizing violations, and everyone knows about the over-expenditures of 11 billion dollars after 2005, as well as the parliamentary audits conducted by the Finance and Budget Committee from 2010 to 2019, which showed that 27 billion dollars were spent without legal proofs, and the file is still with the Audit Bureau today."
He affirmed that "this path must stop; we have repeatedly called for this in past years, and we have made decisions and issued recommendations in the Finance and Budget Committee, but the successive executive authority has continued the same policy." He pointed out that "Article 86 of the Constitution applies to the 2024 budget draft if it is referred within the constitutional deadline, regarding the government's ability to issue it by decree if the Parliament does not decide on it, but this does not apply to the 2023 budget draft submitted outside the constitutional deadline and outside all financial and legal logic."
Kanaan added: "Governments must be aware that budgets imposed on the Parliament, with their figures and violations, are rejected, and I hope that the general assembly follows the Finance and Budget Committee's example, as a clear stance is required against the perceived manipulation by governments since the 1990s, regarding the leniency in sending budgets at the end of the year or later, and establishing their violations based on what was revealed in the parliamentary audit and forensic audit."
Kanaan also addressed a constitutional matter raised in the session by some MPs regarding the decrees, noting the "necessity for the decrees under which the 2024 budget draft will be referred to follow the constitutional mechanism in the absence of the President of the Republic; we cannot overlook the presidential vacancy. We hope that this will be taken into consideration and that there will be complete respect for the constitutional form, and the legal and financial contents that we are discussing."
Present at the session were the caretaker Minister of Finance Youssef Khalil, and MPs: Raji Saad, Melhem Khalaf, Cesar Abi Khalil, Mark Daou, Yassin Yassin, Razi Al-Haj, Hassan Fadlallah, Alan Aoun, Ghazi Zaiter, Ayoub Hamid, Faisal Al-Sayegh, Jan Talouzian, Michel Douaihi, Taha Najjar, Fouad Makhzoumi, Wadah Al-Saad, Adnan Trabulsi, Bilal Abdullah, Ali Hassan Khalil, Ibrahim Mneimneh, Saji Atteyeh, Ghassan Hasbani, Amin Sherri, Ihab Matar, and Michel Moawad. Also present were the acting Director-General of Finance George Mi'rawi and the Director of Revenues at the Ministry of Finance Louay Al-Haj Shhada.
