The 2019 draft budget that the Council of Ministers approved on May 27, 2019 shows budget expenditures at LBP25,840bn or $17.1bn, and budget revenues at LBP19,016bn or $12.6bn, leading to a budget deficit of LBP6,824bn or $4.5bn. The budget is based on a real GDP growth rate of 1.2%, a nominal GDP of LBP89,935bn or $59.7bn, and an inflation rate of 1.75% in 2019. As such, budget spending would be equivalent to 28.7% of GDP and revenues would come at 21.1% of GDP in 2019, resulting in a deficit of 7.6% of GDP. In comparison, actual fiscal spending totaled $15.2bn in the first 11 months of 2018, the latest available figures, while revenues amounted to $10bn, leading to a fiscal deficit of $5.2bn.  

The breakdown of budgetary spending for 2019, excluding Treasury outlays, shows that current expenditures amount to LBP24,169bn ($16bn), equivalent to 93.5% of such spending. Also, capital spending, which includes investing in infrastructure, land expropriation and the purchase of equipment, reaches LBP1,671bn ($1.1bn), or 6.5% of total expenditures in 2019. The compensation of public-sector personnel, which includes salaries, wages & related benefits, as well as retirement & end-of-service indemnities, and transfers to public institutions to cover salaries, amounts to LBP10,054bn, or $6.7bn, representing 39% of total budget spending in 2019. It is followed by interest payments at LBP8,312bn, or $5.5bn (32% of total budget spending) and Transfers to Electricité du Liban (EdL) at LBP2,500bn, or $1.7bn (10% of total budget spending) this year. The estimate for interest payments in the 2019 draft budget incorporates the issuance of LBP12,000bn, or the equivalent of $8bn, worth of Treasury bills at a 1% coupon rate in coordination with Banque du Liban, which aims to generate significant savings in terms of interest payments. In comparison, the compensation of public-sector personnel stood at $5.9bn or 38.7% of total budget spending in the first 11 months of 2018, while interest payments reached $5.1bn (33.7%), and transfers to EdL amounted to $1.6bn (10.7%). 

On the revenues side, the 2019 draft budget forecast tax receipts at LBP14,824bn ($9.8bn), compared to LBP11,998bn ($8bn) in realized tax revenues in the first 11 months of 2018, while it projected non-tax revenues at LBP4,192bn ($2.8bn), relative to LBP3,053bn ($2bn) in the first 11 months of 2018. Receipts from the value-added tax and excise tax on goods & services would generate 42% of total tax revenues, followed by revenues from the tax on income, profits & capital gain (38%), and income from the property tax and custom duties (8% each), while other taxes would generate the remaining 5%. 

Figures released by Banque du Liban show that the number of payment cards issued in Lebanon reached 2,778,510 cards at the end of 2018, constituting an increase of 1.2% from 2,744,589 cards at end-September 2018 and a rise of 5.5% from 2,633,459 cards at end-2017. Cards held by residents accounted for 96.5% of total cards issued in Lebanon at end-2018. The distribution of payment cards by type shows that debit cards with residents reached 1,562,334 and accounted for 56.2% of the total, followed by credit cards with residents at 557,485 (20.1%), prepaid cards with residents at 465,631 (16.8%), charge cards with residents at 96,067 (3.5%), debit cards held by non-residents at 65,431 (2.4%), credit cards with non-residents at 22,430 (0.8%), charge cards held by non-residents at 7,499 (0.3%), and prepaid cards with non-residents at 1,633 (0.1%). 

Further, the aggregate number of points-of-sales accepting payment cards reached 45,142 at the end of 2018, constituting an increase of 0.5% from end-September 2018 and a growth of 6.2% from end-2017. As a result, there were 4.3 points-of-sales per square kilometer in Lebanon at the end of 2018.

Figures released by the Beirut Stock Exchange (BSE) indicate that the trading volume reached 185,805,126 shares in the first five months of 2019, constituting an increase of 3.5 times from 52,743,268 shares traded in the same period last year; while aggregate turnover amounted to $793.8m, up by 2.1 times from a turnover of $386.6m in the first five months of 2018. The surge in the trading volume and turnover is mostly due to a block trade of the common shares of a listed bank. The trade consisted of 119,924,761 shares exchanged for a total of $557.7m in February 2019.

Market capitalization regressed by 22.4% from the end of May 2018 to $8.51bn, with banking stocks accounting for 86.1% of the total, followed by real estate equities (9.9%), industrial shares (3.6%) and trading firms' equities (0.4%). The market liquidity ratio was 9.3% in the covered period compared to 3.5% in the first five months of 2018. 

Banking stocks accounted for 98.3% of the aggregate trading volume in the first five months of 2019, followed by real estate equities with 1.7% and industrial shares with 0.03%. Also, banking stocks accounted for 97.6% of the aggregate value of shares traded, followed by real estate equities with 2.4% and industrial stocks with 0.1%. The average daily traded volume for the period was 1.9 million shares for an average daily value of $8.2m. The figures reflect a year-on-year increase of 3.6 times in average volume, and an annual rise of 2.1 times in the average value in the first five months of the year. In parallel, the Capital Markets Authority's (CMA) Market Value-Weighted Index for stocks traded on the BSE declined by 21% in the first five months of 2019, while the CMA's Banks Market Value-Weighted Index regressed by 10.4% in the covered period.