Chairman of the parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee Ibrahim Kanaan has criticized the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Judicial Police for their failure to respond to his information notes regarding illegal sales of tax stamps. According to Kanaan, these illicit transactions are taking place within public administration premises, citing examples such as the Ministry of Education and the Palace of Justice, “in full public view.”
In an interview with the local MTV channel, Ibrahim Kanaan pointed the finger at “those who supply the market with tax stamps in small quantities, a behavior that inevitably gives rise to a parallel market.”
In this context, he called for the removal of “political concealment” from those profiting from these activities and advocated for a parallel tender for the printing of additional quantities of revenue stamps. A few hours later, on Friday morning, the Ministry of Finance announced the completion of procedures for the printing of 30 million stamps in denominations of 20,000, 100,000, 200,000 and 400,000 Lebanese pounds.
Addressing the issue of the public sector, Kanaan called for the fundamental reform of an overloaded administration.
He recalled that in 2017, he began an initiative where the Finance and Budget Committee, in collaboration with the Central Inspectorate and the Civil Service Department, conducted a census of the workforce profiles of public administrations. He disclosed the existence of 32,000 illegal positions.
Since then, he has persistently called for a consecutive overhaul of the public sector, contingent upon an assessment of its productivity.
