According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Finance (MoF), personnel costs declined by an annual 0.22% to reach $5.88B by November 2019 compared to the same period last year. In fact, the drop in personnel costs was driven by the decreases in “salaries, wages and social benefits “,“End of service indemnities” and “transfers to public institutions”. However, these drops were almost counterbalanced by a significant rise in “Retirement salaries”.
In details, payments for the sub-account of “Salaries, wages, and related benefits” (grasping 60.74% of the total personnel costs) witnessed a decline by 3.85% year-on-year (y-o-y) to reach $3.57B by November 2019. This decline is mainly attributed to the y-o-y drop in “allowances for military personnel” by 37.1%% to reach $328.35M by November 2019. However, this drop was partly counterbalanced by higher payments of salaries and wages to education and military personnel by 7.6% and 1.1% to $719.73M and $671.97M, respectively
In addition, payments for the sub-account of “Retirement salaries payments” (grasping 27.67% of the total personnel costs) rose by 14.88% year-on-year (y-o-y) to reach $1.68B by November 2019. As for “End of service indemnities” (7.09% of the total), it recorded a yearly rise to reach $417.25M compared to $456.38M in the same period last year.
Overall, Personnel costs constituted 71.8% of current primary expenditures by November 2019, compared to 65.8%, in the same period of 2018. Moreover, Personnel costs represented 39% of total expenditures by November 2019, compared to 35.6% in the same period last year.