Jointly published by the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon and the Middle East Forum
| Vol. 2 No. 2 | February 2000 |
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Corm's Figures Just Don't Add Up
by Ziad Abdelnour
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| George Corm |
Finance Minister George Corm has been repeatedly patting himself on the back since his ministry released its 1999 budget figures last month indicating a 42.4% deficit. Only in Lebanon can a government minister reap such immense accolades from a deficit of this size. If only the news were that good . . .
The tragic irony is that when Corm was a scholar in the private sector, he would have been among the first to point out the obvious flaws in this figure. As a government minister, however, his private sensibilities are overwhelmed by the institutional prerogatives of his position. When the powers that be mandated that the budget deficit would fall below 45%, Corm's job was to manipulate the statistics by whatever means necessary to justify this erroneous claim. His second task is to accuse those of us who question his figures of "diverting public opinion" away from the Israeli bombardment of the country.
As it turns out, Corm's figures ignore over $583 million in outstanding payments to contractors, hospitals and the National Social Security Fund. For example, around $60 million is owed to Sukleen, a sanitation company hired by the Ministry of Public Works for several projects in Beirut and Mount Lebanon carried out in 1999. If these outstanding bills had been paid in full, the deficit in 2000 would reach a whopping 53%. Of course, officials at the Ministry of Finance deny that they have tried to mislead the public, claiming that these bills "arrived late."
There are other reasons to question Corm's figures. It appears that the Council for Development and Reconstruction borrowed money from outside the budget, further deflating the official deficit figures. Moreover, statistics released by the Central Bank indicate a $183 million discrepancy in Corm's figures for debt servicing in 1999. A spokesman for Corm recently explained that "the Central Bank cannot keep track of all the revenues and expenditures by the ministry." The real reason for the discrepancy is obvious to all who are familiar with the system in Lebanon--the Central Bank is not headed by a politician and therefore has less of an incentive to devise imaginative ways of misleading the public.
Ironically, Corm's predecessor at the Finance Ministry, Fouad Siniora, was questioned this month by investigators in connection with a case involving forgery of documents. Whenever the next government takes office, investigators will no doubt have some questions for Mr. Corm as well.
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