Lebanon's Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon March 30, 2017. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
BEIRUT: The first Lebanese state budget in 12 years aims to reduce the deficit to 8.7 percent of national output in 2017 from 9.3 percent the year before, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said on Thursday.
The budget, approved by the cabinet on Monday, projects spending of 23.67 trillion Lebanese pounds ($15.7 billion) and revenues of 16.38 trillion pounds.
"Our expected growth ... should reach 2 percent, and it is a percentage of growth that is still limited and in need of a set of measures to boost or improve it," Khalil said.
Approving a state budget has been a main aim of the government led by Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri since he assumed office in November in a political deal that saw Michel Aoun become head of state.
Lebanon's failure to pass a budget for more than a decade has reflected successive political crises since the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, the father of Saad al-Hariri.
An International Monetary Fund report warned in January that Lebanon needed a "sustained and balanced fiscal adjustment", without which its public debt burden, already one of the highest in the world, would continue to rise.
Lebanon's economy has been battered since 2011 by the civil war in neighbouring Syria. More than a million refugees have fled to Lebanon, increasing its population by about a third.
