The UNIDO view on Lebanon’s industrial sector

History shows that roughly all developed countries, which currently benefit from a high standard of living, have gone through a period of successful industrialization—during which the industrial sector, benefiting from high levels of technological advancement and innovation, was the driving force behind national economic growth. A close look at Lebanon’s development pattern tells a different story. Local and regional circumstances have favored the services sector at the expense of the productive sectors of the economy. As a result, Lebanon has not fully benefited from the economic development that industrialization can offer. In the last decades, the contribution of the industrial sector to the national GDP was low compared to industrialized countries in East Asia and the Pacific. Based on statistics by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the contribution of the industrial sector to the country’s GDP now stands at 8.3 percent. Weak investment and growth in productive sectors