The Cabinet held a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Wednesday afternoon at the Grand Serail. 

Information Minister Jamal Jarrah read the following at the end of the meeting: “First, the Council of Ministers decided to exempt cars used by car rental companies from some custom duties, exempt electric cars and electric motorcycles from the 3% fee stipulated in Article 59 of the 2018 budget, exempt fire trucks, ambulances, cars of civil defense, municipalities and unions of municipalities from customs fees and extend the deadline to ask municipalities about locations to establish sanitary landfills for another month.

As for the budget figures, we finished all ministries except two ministries that will remain for the next meeting due to the absence of the concerned ministers. These are: the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Public Works. We will continue discussing the second part of the budgets of those two ministries in the next meeting. 

Also, the reforms committee will hold a meeting tomorrow afternoon and another meeting after the Cabinet’s meeting on Thursday to continue discussing the reforms and to take decisions we hope will be important for the reform which should come with the budget”.  

Question: The Minister of Finance said that the budget is almost done and that you only needed a short session?

Jarrah: This is true regarding the figures. The budget consists of two parts, articles and numbers. We finished the part related to numbers and in the second part there are still two ministries that we will finish soon. As for articles, we will have to go back to some of them in parallel with the decisions of the reforms committee that will meet tomorrow and Thursday to take decisions on some issues.  

Question: How many sessions do you still need to finish the budget?

Jarrah: We do not need more than one session for numbers. As for the reforms, two sessions will be held this week.