As chairman of the Beirut Traders Association, Nicolas Chammas oversees study and research into Lebanon’s commercial sector and lobbies the Lebanese government on behalf of traders. In a chat with Executive he spoke about the contracting economy and the need for policymakers to cut retailers some slack through more supportive legislation. E Where has 2011’s poor economic performance left Lebanon’s retailers? The year 2011 started very weakly because we had a hangover from 2010. The political bickering really dragged the entire economy down. And then in the very early days of January the government collapsed. So all in all, with the absence of government and no decision makers at all and the troubles in Syria, in the first semester of 2011 the [commercial sector] activity collapsed by about 30 percent. There has been a correction upwards in the third quarter… there was a slight increase in the number of tourists
