The good news is that it passed at all (After 5 years). The bad news is that it doesn’t attempt to tackle the deficit. If we can’t cut discretionary government spending in a high growth period, I don’t know when we can. Ex-P.M. Sanioura had made this exact same point last week.
Still, I found the increased tax on bank interests to savers a great idea to both get income and reduce all that extra liquidity. Another tax I would have supported? A Tax on those crazy amounts people are paying for “pretty” phone numbers.
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Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
The amounts paid for those crazy numbers are already paid to the government are they not? At least for Alfa?
Sometimes, but many times they’re normal transactions between individuals. Many times an entrepreneur buys in bulk “fancy” numbers and sells them for outrageous profits to suckers.
Mustapha,
I have been looking and shouting about this for a long time. Your heart is in the right place but not your suggestions. This budget like so many of its predecesors does not have any discretionaty spending to speak of. Lebanon is not Greece or Spain. The European countries among others all over the world have borrowed in order to increase the discretionary spending and so they are in a position to adopt an austere budget by taking back some of what they have given. Not in Lebanon. What is there to cut. The largest 2 items besides defence and debt service are Education and health care. Both of the amount to less than $1 billion . That is not higher than what UNRWA spends on the camp refugees per capita.
There are only two things that the Lebanese government can do :
(1) decrease the debt service through renegotiation, debt forgiveness, moratorium, a combination of the above or even a selective default.
(2) Increase government revenues but NOT through a regressive VAT but an effective tax system whose burden is carried by the top 10% of the Lebanese citizens. Revenues should increaraise wordiest
se as to account for about 25-28a5 of the GDP.
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