Summary
After Parliament passed the 2019 state budget Friday night, more than halfway through the year, work will now shift to focus on drawing up next year's budget, Finance Minister Ali Hasan Khalil has said.
It took Parliament a month and a half to pass the 2019 budget.
Reducing Lebanon's deficit-to-GDP ratio, which in 2018 stood at 11.1 percent, by at least 1 percent every year over five years was one of the key pledges the Lebanese government made at last year's CEDRE conference.
Khalil told Al Joumhouria that next year's budget will seek to bring that ratio down even further.
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