Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead

Initiating the deliberations on the real economy stalwart sectors of manufacturing industry and the food-processing and agro-industrial enterprises, Yasser Akkaoui, Executive Magazine’s editor-in-chief, outlines the session’s structural design as one that combines a first part of qualifying and quantifying the size and economic impact of industrial manufacturing in Lebanon with participants’ proposals for solutions and builds towards an action plan for development of manufacturing as industry and for individual enterprises. “De-risking industries and manufacturing today is not an easy task especially when we’re doing this in the absence of any government,” he acknowledges the roundtable’s challenge. As a preamble, Thomas Schellen, Executive Magazine’s editor-at-large, cites two quotes, the first from a paper by the Trade and Investment Facilitation initiative that is affiliated with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), emphasizing that “manufacturing is in position to push creativity by developing innovative products.” From the Executive Magazine’s brief on