The Cabinet Monday approved funds allocated to Lebanese ministries in a special session to discuss the 2015 budget draft bill.
Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil presented the expenditures that are recognized by the budget bill, and presented the budget allocated to each ministry.
Discussions then delved into the funds allocated to the offices of the presidency and the prime minister, as well the budget for the ministries of interior, foreign affairs, finance, public works and education.
Ministers agreed on the funds allocated to those offices and ministries.
Cabinet will continue its discussions of the budget bill in a session Wednesday.
Lebanon has not passed a public budget bill since 2005. Instead, the Cabinet has annually approved spending without approval from Parliament.
Following the meeting, several ministers expressed doubts over the Cabinet’s ability to approve the 2015 budget due to several complications posed by the bill, a ministerial source told The Daily Star.
Cabinet’s inability to approve a budget in 10 years and the year-long presidential vacuum, which remains a priority for ministers, will further complicate the government’s chances of passing the bill, the source said.
One example of these complications involves the dispute over including Lebanon’s share of financing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in the budget, with Hezbollah ministers objecting to adding the funds.
“We objected to the agenda item so it wasn’t discussed,” Industry Ministry Hussein Hajj Hasan, one of Hezbollah’s two ministers in Cabinet, said after the meeting.
Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi, however, insisted on adding STL funds to the bill.
“The current government and the governments before it have all paid Lebanon’s portion of funding the STL but have done so in a warped manner,” Rifi, who belongs to the Future Movement, said, in reference to how the funds were approved outside of the budget.
"So why don't we just pay it in a legal way?" he added.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk dismissed rumors that Hezbollah was set to hand over Syrian jihadi hostages to Lebanon’s General Security ahead of an anticipated swap deal to secure the release of 25 Lebanese servicemen who are being held hostage by ISIS and the Nusra Front.
Machnouk insisted that the allegations only served to disrupt negotiations he said were being managed in a “serious manner” by General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim.
By Hasan Lakis
