BEIRUT: Lebanon’s public finances will dominate Thursday’s Cabinet session, with Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil expected to address outstanding issues, including a draft law to issue eurobonds.
Ministers arrived around 9:30 p.m. to the Grand Serail, where Prime Minister Tammam Salam chaired an extraordinary session designed to discuss the “financial situation in the country,” a ministerial source said.
Along with the draft law to issue eurobonds at low interest rates to finance the public debt and cover state expenditures, Khalil will request a bill to allow extra-budgetary spending.
Khalil seeks to legalize his ministry’s extra-budgetary spending via a Cabinet draft law that would be later approved by Parliament. But the March 14 coalition is demanding that the government retroactively approve $11 billion of extra-budgetary expenditures by the government of Fouad Siniora between 2006 and 2009.
Minister of State Nabil De Freij said Parliament’s approval was needed for most of the finance draft laws, saying the session should refrain from discussing any item outside the specified agenda.
“Issuing the eurobonds requires Parliament’s approval, but the draft of the extra-budgetary spending should include all previous spending by governments since 2005 to this date,” De Freij said before stepping into the Cabinet session.
“We should legalize spending for governments under [former] prime ministers Najib Mikati, Saad Hariri and Fouad Siniora but the other coalition is saying that such a draft law would take time.”
He said the Cabinet was still waiting for the Finance Parliamentary Committee headed by MP Ibrahim Kanaan to finalize calculations and the amount spend by previous governments.
“But he has not yet finished, why is that?" he asked. "Unfortunately, politics is meddling in the economy.”
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