Social Protection Spending in Lebanon

Highlights

The rapidly and continuously deteriorating macroeconomic conditions, coupled to the COVID-19 pandemic and complex political environment, are pushing the Lebanese population into dire poverty. The magnitude of these multiple crises requires from the country to quickly bolster its social protection coping mechanisms to safeguard growing vulnerable groups and avoid a potentially disastrous impact on the nation’s well-being.

Amid marginal fiscal space, and with a fiscal deficit of more than USD 3 billion, a balance of payment crisis and the depletion of its FX reserves, it is fundamental for Lebanon to assess the financing, allocation and impact of current spending that would allow to identify potential areas of savings, reallocation and reprioritization of existing social spending.

The Budget Spending Review covers the period 2017-2020 and comprises all allocations made under the State Budget to finance social protection services and programmes, adopting a wide and comprehensive perspective for data collection and analysis that went beyond the traditional budget classification. The analysis and review were conducted by the Institut des Finances Basil Fuleihan, in the context of the development of the National Social Protection Strategy, with the technical support of UNICEF, ILO and Beyond Group