The MOF published its draft proposal for the 2025 Budget. The draft budget is largely a contingent budget designed to ‘keep business as usual’, not a transformative budget aimed at redesigning the economic scene and helping to pull the country out of its current crisis.
The budget envisions expenditures at 427.69 trillion LBP and revenues at 410.13 trillion LBP, with deficit projected at 17.56 trillion LBP. As such, it constitutes a 38.7% increase on the 2024 budget which was set at 308.43 trillion LBP. Interesting, also, that the draft budget envisioned Treasury receipts of 19.58 trillion LBP.
In terms of expenditures, 90.2% fall on current expenditures and 9.8% on capital expenditures. In addition, wages, salaries, and social benefits constitute 54.8% of current expenditures, or $2.35 billion at the market exchange rate of 89,500 LBP per USD. As to revenues, tax revenues constitute 82% of revenues and non-tax revenues 18%. Out of tax revenues, 58.6 % arise from VAT revenues and 15.5% from customs revenues, and 13.2% from profit and income taxes.
It is expected, according to the draft budget, that the deficit will be financed from domestic loans, though it is interesting that no domestic loans were undertaken in 2024 as the budget was presumably balanced. Also interesting, is that the tax increases and higher exchange rate valuations in 2024 and 2025 have paid off in terms of higher revenues; and, in reality, this seems to be one of the most important purposes of the budget.
Trillion LBP
| 2021 | 2024 Budget Law | Proposed 2025 Budget | |
| Tax Revenue | 15.23 | 243.09 | 326.41 |
| Income and Profit | 5.74 | 21.46 | 43.11 |
| Property | 2.00 | 36.06 | 29.52 |
| VAT | 6.47 | 141.41 | 191.26 |
| Customs | 0.484 | 32.89 | 50.68 |
| Other | 0.531 | 11.25 | 11.83 |
| Non-Tax Revenue | 3.56 | 65.34 | 83.71 |