--- title: "Adjusting Salaries and Wages Is a Duty, Not a Favor | Ghazi Mahmoud" url: https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/2026-01-28-6d1c25/ lang: en description: "The issue of adjusting salaries and wages in Lebanon has long been a point of contention between public sector employees and labor unions on one side, and the state on the other, especially since the state has consistently failed to approve fair increases commensurate with rising inflation rates and rising cost-of-living levels." --- [All articles](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/) # Adjusting Salaries and Wages Is a Duty, Not a Favor [Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Dr. Ghazi Mahmoud](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/about/) 28 Jan 2026 · 6 min read [The Lebanese economy](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/leb/) The issue of adjusting salaries and wages in Lebanon has long been a point of contention between public sector employees and labor unions on one side, and the state on the other, especially since the state has consistently failed to approve fair increases commensurate with rising inflation rates and rising cost-of-living levels. The state's approach to this issue has been marked by delay and procrastination, with the required increases approved only after they have lost their real value, stripping salary and wage adjustment policies of their economic rationale and weakening their social impact. Compounding this reality, the solutions offered by successive governments have often come in isolation from any reform plan, or even any vision for the future, with salary and wage increases put forward without securing sustainable sources of funding. This has turned salary and wage adjustments into additional burdens on the public budget, rather than part of an integrated economic plan that helps secure a decent life for employees and workers without disrupting fiscal balances or overburdening the public treasury. With the arrival of 2020, and in the wake of the financial and monetary collapse that swept Lebanon, the issue of adjusting salaries and wages moved to the forefront after they rapidly lost their value. This deepened the crisis facing employees and retirees to a degree unprecedented in both severity and duration, coinciding as it did with the deterioration of the lira's exchange rate and rising prices of goods and services, at a time when salaries and wages lost around 95% of their purchasing power. In contrast, government remedies remained captive to partial and temporary solutions, limited to approving discretionary increases, some called incentives and others social assistance, based neither on cost-of-living rates nor on inflation indicators, and all lacking a comprehensive vision for adjusting salaries and wages. Most dangerous about these solutions is that they entail an attempt to strip away the vested rights of employees, military personnel, and retirees, as the increases approved to date are included neither in the calculation of end-of-service indemnity nor in the calculation of pensions. Despite the salary and wage increases approved over the elapsed period of the crisis, their cost in the 2025 budget fell to around $2.4 billion of total budget expenditures, down from more than $8 billion in the 2019 budget. This illustrates the extent of the injustice inflicted upon public sector employees and retirees, yet the 2026 budget made no allocations for the new increases they are demanding. While the issue of salary adjustment continues to swing between fear of its repercussions on the exchange rate and linking it to the path of economic recovery, and despite the passage of around six years since the crisis began, the interventions of the International Monetary Fund and the list of conditions and restrictions whose implementation it oversees now stand out. Aligning with them on this is the Civil Service Board, which proposes granting salary increases by multiplying base salaries gradually over five years, starting in 2026 and running through 2030. Yet the paradox in these approaches, whether regarding the increases approved by the government, the Civil Service Board's draft plan, or the conditions and restrictions of the International Monetary Fund, is that they all ignore rising inflation rates and the growing cost of living. This reduces the proposed solutions for salaries and wages to mere nominal increases eaten away by inflation and rising prices, while ignoring the fact that employees' salaries and wages are not merely a cost paid by the state to public sector employees, both military and civilian, but rather compensation for their contribution to providing security and public services, compensation that must be fair and allow them a decent life. It is worth noting that any increase in the purchasing power of employees and workers through salary and wage adjustments inevitably translates into higher demand for goods and services, and an increase in overall consumption that helps stimulate various productive and economic sectors, thereby aiding economic recovery. No economy can rise or regain its health in the absence of an effective and capable state, bearing in mind that such a state derives its effectiveness and capability from the executive apparatus formed by employees across their various spheres of work. Procrastination in approving fair increases to the salaries and wages of public sector employees and retirees, military and civilian alike, thus amounts to making them bear the consequences of the wrongdoings committed by the political and monetary authorities during the period that paved the way for the crisis and caused its outbreak. It also ignores the economic role played by people on limited incomes, of whom public sector employees make up the largest share, given that their incomes constitute a primary driver of economic activity. Meanwhile, the current government has failed to fulfill its promise to adjust the salaries of employees and retirees, particularly military personnel, whereby their salaries in 2026 were supposed to equal at least 50% of what they were in 2019 in US dollars, whereas this year's draft budget included no allocations to cover their cost. Nor has the government fulfilled its promise to settle school allowances for retired military personnel for 2025 so that they match the allowances approved at the State Employees' Cooperative. Paradoxically, the government approved astronomical salaries for regulatory bodies and their heads, each exceeding in value the salaries of the three presidencies even after their increase under the Civil Service Board's draft plan through 2030. This raises questions about the criteria adopted to approve such salaries, as well as the principle of fairness across categories of public service. Those questions grow more acute given that the role of these bodies is advisory and non-binding on the supervisory authorities. In light of the above, it must be emphasized that adjusting the salaries and wages of public sector employees, whether military or civilian, is neither a favor from the political class nor an option open to postponement, but rather a constitutional and moral duty to which the state must commit toward its employees. Indeed, among the most basic rights of every employee is to receive a fair wage commensurate with the nature of their work and responsibilities, ensuring a decent standard of living that guarantees a minimum of stability and human dignity. Likewise, a retiree who spent the prime of their youth in the service of the state and its institutions has the right to have their dignity safeguarded after retirement and their right to a decent life preserved, free from destitution, in recognition of their sacrifices and commitment, and to uphold the principle of social justice on which public policies are supposed to rest. Based on the above, the issue of salaries and wages will remain an open-ended crisis with no solution on the horizon, a permanent hallmark of the social crisis, and a mirror of the state's failure for as long as it evades adopting a scientific and comprehensive approach to adjusting salaries and wages. What is needed is an approach that respects the principle of fairness, takes competence and productivity into account, and factors in real inflation rates and the actual cost of living. Translated from Arabic with AI. [Read it in Arabic](https://ghazimahmoud.com/articles/2026-01-28-6d1c25/) ## Published in - [Channel 23](https://ch23.com/Article/329678/تصحيح-الرواتب-والأجور-واجبٌ-وليس-مَكرُمة) - [MTV Lebanon](https://www.mtv.com.lb/news/1647867) - [OZ Arab Media](https://ozarab.media/تصحيح-الرواتب-والأجور-واجبٌ-وليس-مَكر/) - [Lebanon Files](https://www.lebanonfiles.com/2026/articles/باقلامهم/تصحيح-الرواتب-والأجور-واجبٌ-وليس-مَكر/) ## More on the Lebanese economy [All articles on this subject](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/leb/) [28 Jan 2026 · Adjusting Salaries and Wages Is a Duty, Not a Favour: A Reading of the Salaries and Wages Crisis in Lebanon and Ways to Address It · Al-Duha magazine ](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/2026-01-28-95b890/) [14 Jan 2026 · Financial Regularity and Preventing a Repeat of the Catastrophe · Channel 23, MTV Lebanon ](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/2026-01-14-923a19/) [17 Dec 2025 · Where are military personnel, civil servants and retirees in the holiday season activity? · Channel 23, MTV Lebanon ](https://ghazimahmoud.com/en/articles/2025-12-17-e16789/)