BEIRUT, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- The Lebanese parliament approved Thursday the 2017 state budget, the first state budget in 12 years, following three days of arduous debate, the National News Agency (NNA) reported.
A total of 61 MPs out of the 128-seat parliament voted in favor of the bill, and four lawmakers from the Kataeb Party voted against as eight other lawmakers abstained from voting.
Al-Jadeed television said the MPs who abstained from voting were MP Antoine Zahra of the Lebanese Forces, independent MP Butros Harb and six lawmakers from Hezbollah's Loyalty to Resistance bloc.
The three-day parliamentary debate had witnessed heated arguments over the issue of approving a state budget without the submission of final accounts for the past 12 years.
Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel described the approval of a state budget without a final account for the year 2016 as a "violation of the Constitution, the public auditing law and the parliament's by-laws."
Disagreements over final accounts and an acute political rift between the March 8 and March 14 forces were behind the long-running failure to approve a state budget.
