Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, chaired on Wednesday afternoon at the Grand Serail the ministerial committee in charge of studying the financial and economic reforms, in the presence of Deputy Prime Minister Ghassan Hasbani, ministers Ali Hassan Khalil, Mohammad Fneish, Jamal Jarrah, Mansour Bteich, Mohammed Choucair, Saleh Gharib, Youssef Fenianos, Camille Abu Suleiman and Adel Afiouni and a number of advisors.

After the meeting, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said: “Contrary to some media reports that mention fundamental disagreements in the government, whether at the level of the cabinet or this committee, the committee held today a very useful meeting in a very positive atmosphere. We discussed the customs draft law, which is the fruit of years of discussion. There were details about most of the basic articles, which fundamentally alter the customs procedures, have a large impact on the country's earnings and facilitate people’s lives.

Today, the draft has been distributed to the Ministerial Committee, we will study this law and submit it to the Council of Ministers for approval, and the government can make this major amendment to the Customs Law, thus we would have achieved one of the important demands of the CEDRE Conference and one of the fundamental reforms on which all political parties agree.

Some features of the pension system presented by the World Bank were discussed. This issue needs to be discussed in greater depth.

The ministerial committee will meet tomorrow immediately after the cabinet session and will follow up the discussion on the papers submitted by political parties. Significant progress has been made in the budget, and it is almost finished at the level of figures. There is a review of some articles, there are only ten new ones, compared to 94 articles in the 2019 budget.

Tomorrow we have a session, and I think we will be able to reach an understanding on a set of points for which we set an agenda, and Friday we will hold another session in the afternoon.