Officially launched on Friday at the Grand Serail in Beirut, the ‘Techniques, capacity building and reorganisation of the Ministry of Finance in Lebanon’ project will run for 28 months and focus on budget efficiency and transparency. Experts from the French and Italian ministries of finance and economy will work with Lebanese officials on the initiative.

Among the project’s specific aims are improved revenue forecasting, budget preparation and internal controls. It will also support Lebanon in terms of compliance with international standards and European legislation.

‘The expected results include the definition of a strategy to reform the public finance management, the strengthening of the institutional capacity for macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, the improvement of the methodology for budgeting, the evaluation of the financial control system to introduce a system of internal control based on best practices, and the support of the administrative reform of the Ministry of Finance and its directorates institutional capacity,’ the EU said.

Representing Lebanon’s finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil at the launch, finance ministry director general Alain Bifani said: ‘The twinning project is the first of its kind in terms of budget implementation and it is different than previous ones because it adds the expertise of Italy and not only that of France particularly in the field of training and information technology.’ 

As the project develops, French and Italian experts will visit Lebanon on a series of technical assistance missions and expertise days. In return, Lebanese officials will visit France and Italy to exchange of best practice.