According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Finance (MoF), personnel costs rose by an annual 0.42% to reach $5.39B by October 2019 compared to the same period last year. In fact, the eminent growth in personnel costs was driven by the increase in “End of service indemnities” while all other sub-components “Retirement salaries payments” and “salaries, wages and social benefits “registered a yearly contraction.
In details, payments for the sub-account of “Salaries, wages, and related benefits” (grasping 60.62% of the total personnel costs) witnessed a decline by 2.67% year-on-year (y-o-y) to reach $3.27B by October 2019. This decline is mainly attributed to the y-o-y drop in “allowances for military personnel” by 28.02% to reach $323.71M by October 2019. However, this drop was partly counterbalanced by higher payments of salaries and wages to education and military personnel by 7.8% and 0.9% to $1.66B and $671.97M, respectively
In addition, payments for the sub-account of “Retirement salaries payments” (grasping 27.31% of the total personnel costs) rose by 15.38% year-on-year (y-o-y) to reach $1.47B by October 2019. As for “End of service indemnities” (12.76% of the total), it recorded a yearly drop to reach $417.24M compared to $456.38M in the same period last year.
Overall, Personnel costs constituted 67.3% of current primary expenditures by October 2019, compared to 66.1%, in the same period of 2018. Moreover, Personnel costs represented 36.3% of total expenditures by October 2019, compared to 36.7% in the same period last year.