Lebanon’s long-awaited 2019 budget

A sobering reality emerges in the shadow of the long-awaited 2019 budget, declared by Prime Minister Saad Hariri as the most austere in Lebanon’s history. As a stop-gap fiscal rescue package, it falls short of the transformational budget, based on a grand national vision for debt reduction and upgrading of critical infrastructure that is sorely needed at this juncture. Justifiably, the refinancing of near-term maturity Eurobonds is on hold as foreign investors ponder the absence of the promised public reforms. Similarly, the CEDRE creditors—about 8 percent of the pledged amounts are grants, with the majority of the funding in new loans—have also withheld the pledged funding on the requirement that Lebanon undertake serious public reforms. An unnecessary ordeal A unanimous austerity consensus across the political class was met with anxiety, disappointment, and anger by large segments of the population, particularly public sector employees, military officers, teachers, and pensioners. The budget