In the 2005 Public Budget Law, the last to be approved by Parliament, budget reserves totaled LBP 195 billion, that is an imperceptible 1.95% of the public budget, which stood at LBP 10,000 billion. The increase in expenses between 2005 and 2014 and the failure to approve any budget during this period have resulted in the adoption of the one-twelfth rule and the opening of extra credits in the public budget to cover the increasing expenses by virtue of the following laws:

    Law no. 238 dated October 22, 2012 which approved extra credits worth LBP 9248.6 billion - LBP 8315.2 billion for the public budget and LBP 933.6 billion for annex budgets (Loto Libanais, Telecoms, Cereals and Sugar Beets budgets) - to be added to the digits of the 2005 public budget to account for the public spending in 2012. The budget reserves were assigned LBP 1204 billion. 

    Law no. 1 dated October 30, 2014 which approved extra credits worth LBP 626,607,155,000 to cover the deficit in the salaries, wages and relevant supplements until the end of 2014.

    Automatically operative Law no. 15 (for it was issued after the presidential vacuum)dated November 11, 2014 which approved extra credits worth LBP 340 billion to be added to the digits of the 2005 public budget to account for the public spending in 2014.

 

Extra-budgetary spending surpasses reserves

A look at the following Table 1 reveals that the credits transferred from the budget reserves have totaled LBP 1146 billion, an amount way beyond the assigned LBP 340 billion. Spending in the absence of sufficient credits implies that the government and the legislature are likely to issue yet another law approving the opening of additional credits to cover the discrepancies between the credits allocated initially and those that have been spent, which will translate into higher deficit and an increase in public debt.

 

Below are the credits transferred from the budget reserves to the ministries and public administrations in 2014:
 

 

In the research issued in the previous issue of The Monthly on the Aging Politicians of Lebanon, it was incorrectly stated that MP Ali Eid was born in 1925 (90 years old), based on the data featured on page 381 of the 2007 Lebanese Parliamentary Dictionary prepared by Adnan Daher, Secretary General of Parliament and Dr. Riad Ghannam (see image). In view of this error, we would like to correct the mistake by confirming that MP Ali Eid was in fact born on July 14, 1940. We extend our sincere apologies for this mistake and hope that it has not adversely affected you.