State Budget to be Passed Monday as Aoun 'Responds Positively' to LF Demands

The Cabinet is expected to approve the 2017 state budget on Monday amid a positive approach by President Michel Aoun towards the Lebanese Forces' proposal regarding the electricity sector, a media report said on Sunday.

“After LF leader Samir Geagea visited the president in Baabda after which he hinted that his ministers might resign from the government, Aoun summoned Energy Minister Cesar Abi Khalil, who belongs to his movement,” to the presidential palace, the Kuwaiti daily al-Anbaa said.

Abi Khalil was accompanied by a number of the ministry's experts and consultants.

“Aoun lauded their efforts... but he told them that they are technical experts and that the decision belongs to him and that they should implement it,” the newspaper added.

Due to disputes among the rival political parties, Lebanon has not approved a state budget since 2005.

On Thursday, Geagea stressed the “firmness” of the rising alliance between the LF and the Free Patriotic Movement while noting that his party is not seeking to “interfere in the work of the energy minister.”

Dismissing media reports suggesting that the LF-FPM ties have been strained by the electricity file, Geagea stressed that “rectifying the issue of electricity is important for rectifying the state budget.”

“The FPM ministers have good intentions towards resolving the electricity crisis, but the problem is in the structure of the Lebanese administration and the in the work of the Lebanese government,” Geagea added.

He also called on the government to ask the energy minister to “prepare a booklet of conditions for organizing a call for tenders for the electricity sector in Lebanon within a deadline of three months at the latest,” noting that “a law issued in 2014 allows the Energy Ministry to giver power production contracts to the private sector.”