There will be “no new taxes” in the 2022 state budget, “contrary to what is being rumored,” Finance Minister Youssef Khalil said after Monday’s Cabinet session.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed al-Nasser, who visited Lebanon over the weekend, demanded that Lebanese authorities respond to the paper of demands that he submitted before January 30, the date of an Arab foreign ministers meeting that will be held in Kuwait, media reports said.

Cabinet convened on Monday, at the Baabda Palace, for the first time since October.

President Michel Aoun presided over the session, after having met with Prime Minister Najib Miqati.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri on Sunday addressed crowds that flocked to the Center House from Akkar to express their rejection of his likely boycott of the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Al-Mustaqbal Movement on Sunday condemned verbal attacks on Saudi Arabia, after social media videos showed supporters of ex-PM Saad Hariri shouting insults against the kingdom during a solidarity rally outside the Center House.

Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri reportedly said, while chatting with journalists, that "sometimes, one should step back to be able to step forward again."

Prime Minister Najib Miqati and ex-PMs Fouad Saniora and Tammam Salam have held a meeting to discuss “the developing political situation in light of ex-PM Saad Hariri’s decision to refrain from running in the elections,” a source from the so-called club of ex-PMs said.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday warned against passing, in the 2022 state budget, new financial decisions similar to the new wage scale.

"We warn against trying to pass financial decisions that are more like a new veiled version of the new wage scale," al-Rahi ssaid.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nasser al-Mohammed Al-Sabah met Sunday morning with President Michel Aoun in Baabda, hours after he arrived in Beirut and met with Prime Minister Najib Miqati.

After the meeting, the Kuwaiti minister said he is "carrying a Kuwaiti, Gulf, Arab and international message containing measures and ideas to build confidence again with Lebanon."

Ex-PM Saad Hariri has told al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc and al-Mustaqbal Movement’s political bureau that he has decided not to take part in the upcoming parliamentary elections -- neither in person nor as a political movement, media reports said on Saturday.