Oct 22, 2019
What Reforms Did Lebanon’s Government Approve to Ease Protests?
Bloomberg News
,(Bloomberg) -- Lebanon’s government approved a package of emergency measures Monday, including structural and fiscal reforms that were delayed for years by political infighting, as officials sought to avoid a financial meltdown and quell five days of protests demanding they resign.
This is a breakdown of the key steps:
- Approve 2020 budget with deficit target equivalent to 0.63% of GDP by Oct. 25, 2019 and the following measures:
- Subsidize losses of state electricity company by no more than $1 billion, half the $2 billion sum it normally receives a year
- The central bank will slash by 50% the servicing costs for Lebanese pound-denominated government debt that it holds
- Pay all expenditures above 100 million pounds ($66,000) in installments over three years
- Reduce salaries of current and former ministers and parliamentarians by 50%
- Impose a one-time income tax on banks for 2020
- No other taxes, levies
- Scrap plan to tax pensions for retired civil servants, military personnel
- Limit border smuggling
- Reduce by 70% the budget for the Council for Development and Reconstruction, Council of the South and another state fund.
- Improve transparency and fight corruption by approving a series of measures by year-end including:
- A law to restore plundered state funds
- A national strategy to fight corruption
- A law to protect corruption whistle blowers
- A law that would make all public entities accountable to courts
- Ensure all government purchases comply with procurement law
- Freeze unnecessary investment spending in several sectors including telecommunications
- Approve $13.3 million of additional financing for a program that supports poor families
- Provide low cost housing loans
- Secure electricity around the clock by mid-2020, slash electricity sector losses by 2021
- Hasten launch of tenders to build temporary and permanent power plants
- Approve tender book for power plant bids, launch tender by year-end, sign contracts by February of next year
- Finalize bids offered to build Floating Storage Regasification Units
- Approve by mid-2020 all measures proposed by international donors at the CEDRE meeting in Paris in 2018, including a progressive income tax and competition law
- Approve law to resolve disputes over illegal construction along the coast
- Execute all measures set out in McKinsey & Co.’s Lebanon Economic Vision
- Transfer surpluses from all ministries and state enterprises to the Treasury
- Merge ministries, abolish the information ministry and review other public entities
- Consider selling a stake in the country’s two mobile networks, which are both government-owned
- Finalize by year-end plans to privatize other state enterprises including Middle East Airlines, Casino du Liban, Beirut Port and the Beirut stock exchange
- Review how state properties are used and look at ways to utilize them better
- Implement investment projects previously approved by the government and valued at $2.7 billion
To contact the reporter on this story: Dana Khraiche in Beirut at dkhraiche@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Paul Abelsky
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