Head of the Finance and Budget Parliamentary Committee, MP Ibrahim Kanaan, said on Tuesday that the new state budget included 67 articles, which were distributed among four chapters.
"The Committee could have introduced further amendments had the draft budget been referred during the allotted constitutional stint," Kanaan said while reading out the report of the Budget Committee.
He went on to explain that the draft budget lacked the required coverage, thus contradicting with Article 83 of the Constitution and the state auditing law.
"A large proportion of fund allocations have been spent (...) before the adoption of the draft budget by the government," Kanaan maintained.
"Loans are not part of the new budget, neither are the expenses of bodies, institutions, and councils that work for the state," the lawmaker added.
He went on to explain that the first chapter was the only one related to the budget and that the other three chapters included a lot of texts that were being "stuffed" into the draft budget.
"The Finance Committee has made amendments that deal with the draft budget law and the appropriations allocated to expenditures and revenues," Kanaan added, explaining that the amendments of the Finance Committee dealt with 32 out of 76 articles, and the cancelation of 10 articles.
Kanaan also said that the Finance and Budget Committee had completed studying the draft state budget and other 2017 relevant budgets "without financial accounts".
"The submission of financial accounts is the duty of the Cabinet," Kanaan said, asking government members for the reason behind this "delay and negligence".
Kanaan finally explained that parliamentary scrutiny had been hindered due to the fact that no budget had been submitted for over 11 years, not to mention failure to conduct financial accounts.
"The Committee has tried to contribute to the rationalization of public spending by identifying the areas of financial squandering. It has also issued a set of recommendations for the government to take into consideration," he added.
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