According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Finance (MoF), personnel costs rose by an annual 22.7% to reach $940M by Feb. 2018. In fact, the eminent growth in personnel costs was driven by the parliament’s ratification of “Law #46” attached to the passing of the new salary scale for public sector employees in July 2018. As a result, “Salaries, wages, and related employee benefits” shot up, and so did the “retirement” payments. However, “end of service compensations” dropped during the first two months of the year.
In details, payments for the sub-account of “Salaries, wages, and social benefits” shot up by 27.4% year-on-year (y-o-y) to reach $638.1M by Feb 2018. This uptick may be attributed to a 29.8% y-o-y rise in the total salaries of military personnel to stand at $427.2M by Feb 2018. Moreover, total salaries to “education personnel” as well as the “civil personnel” recorded annual upticks of 25.2% and 37.2% to reach $105.5M and $78.3M, respectively.
Meanwhile, the sub-account, “retirement”, increased by 16.5% to $238.1M while “end of service compensations” shrank by 20.7% y-o-y to $15.3M by February 2018.
Overall, Personnel costs constituted 63% of Current primary expenditures by Feb 2018, compared to 60% and 62% in the same periods of 2016 and 2017, respectively. Personnel costs also represented 33% of total public spending by Feb 2018, compared to 29% and 38% over the same period of 2016 and 2017, respectively.
Breakdown of Salaries, Wages and Related Benefits by Feb 2018 (in $M)
| Basic Salaries | Total | |||
| 2017 | 2018 | 2017 | 2018 | |
| Military Personnel | 261.4 | 336.3 | 329 | 427.2 |
| Education Personnel | 72 | 96 | 84 | 105 |
| Civilian Personnel | 43 | 59 | 57 | 78 |
| Government contribution to employees cooperative | – | – | 20 | 20 |
| Customs Salaries | – | – | 10 | 5 |
| Total | 377 | 492 | 501 | 638 |
Source: MoF