BEIRUT: The parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee formed Tuesday a small panel charged with resolving a long-standing row over the distribution of telecom tax revenues to Lebanon’s municipalities, frozen since 2009.
The decision was made during the panel’s meeting in Parliament chaired by MP Ibrahim Kanaan which discussed the municipalities’ tax revenues from the mobile phone sector.
The committee was briefed by the director general of the Telecommunications Ministry and representatives from the Interior and Justice Ministries on how to allocate the share of the municipalities’ tax revenues from the telecom sector estimated at more than $3 billion since 2009.
“There is a qualitative change in discussions. We have entered legally available options,” Kanaan, the committee’s chairman, told reporters after the meeting. He said the Telecommunications Ministry had made more than one proposal on how to calculate the telecom tax revenues to the municipalities.
Kanaan, who belongs to MP Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, said a small panel, comprising representatives from the Finance, Telecommunications, Interior and Justice ministries and the chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee, had been formed and tasked with solving the issue over the distribution of tax revenues from the mobile phone sector to the municipalities.
The panel’s formation comes a few days after Telecommunications Minister Boutros Harb announced that the municipalities would finally get their share of tax revenues for the first time since 2009.
Harb said last week municipalities should receive a 10-percent share of the telecoms revenues, pursuant to Article 55 of the country’s tax law.
He implicitly accused the FPM, which held the Telecommunications Ministry in the past, of blocking the transfer of municipalities’ shares of these revenues back in 2009.
The amount of funds frozen since 2009, according to Harb, has surpassed LL6 billion ($4 million).
After the establishment of the mobile phone telecom industry in 1994, a bill was drafted that required 10 percent of revenues to be transferred to municipal governments.
But Harb and the FPM disagree over who holds the authority to distribute the funds. Harb maintains that the funds should be transferred to the municipalities via the Finance Ministry. But the FPM in 2009 began holding the funds, arguing that the law was clear in that the Telecoms Ministry should directly transfer revenues to the municipalities.
Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, Harb’s political opponent who held the post of telecoms minister in 2009, met at his office Tuesday with a delegation from the municipalities’ federation to discuss the tax revenues.
Khalil Harfoush, head of the municipalities’ federation in the southern town of Jezzine, warned of escalation by the municipalities if they did not get their share of tax revenues from the mobile phone sector.
“We are heading for escalatory steps if our demands for the payment of all municipality dues, estimated at more than LL1.8 billion, about $1 million, are not met,” Harfoush told reporters after the meeting with Bassil. He said the municipalities were in dire need of the money for local development projects given the fact that they are hosting a large number of Syrian refugees.
It was not immediately clear why there was such a massive discrepancy between the figures cited by Harb and those cited by Harfoush.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary Public Works and Transportation Committee discussed the new traffic law in the presence of Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk. The law, due to go into effect starting in April, calls for imposing tougher punishment for traffic violations.
MP Mohammad Qabbani, the committee’s chairman, said the panel recommended during its meeting the revival of municipal police in Beirut and renovation of bus stations and establishment of new ones. The committee also discussed the establishment of a traffic unit in the Internal Security Forces, he said.
The parliamentary Public Health, Labor and Social Affairs Committee, headed by MP Atef Majdalani, continued discussion over a program to do away with poverty facing poor families. The committee said indications showed that over 300,000 families lived on less than $2 per day.
“There is a need to help those families within a program set up by the Social Affairs Ministry which calls for providing financial aid equivalent to a third of the minimum wage to the poorest families, on condition that the family principal pledges to send his children to school,” Majdalani said, adding that the money for the program would be included in a special provision in the state budget.
The parliamentary Youth and Sports Committee discussed the payment of the state’s outstanding financial dues to institutions which participated in organizing the 2009 Francophone Games tournament.
Sports and Youth Minister Abdul Muttaleb al-Hinawi said an amount of LL8 billion had been transferred for this purpose.
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