The Lebanese people’s suffering and misery is a seemingly never-ending story. Its latest data point is February 28, 2026. The day when a “pre-emptive” attack pitted Israeli and US aggressors against Iranian ideological theocrats in mutual acts of war which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, immediately and emphatically, condemned as violations of Article 2 of the UN Charta by the three conflict actors.
But regardless of all words and better knowledge, Hezbollah’s missiles and drones, and soon the much more destructive IDF military inventories started being deployed from and against Lebanon. From a March 1 perspective, the only predictable outcome is the horrid civilian body counts and massive economic destruction on the Lebanese side that are in no way proportional correlation to the Arab instigators of “retaliation”.
Again. And again. And again, Lebanon’s diverse residents will not only suffer immediate pains beyond measure but economic growth will be regressing and investors’ justified fears will paralyse all economic development plans of another, hapless, Lebanese government. If, by Executive editors’ educated guestimate, a virtuous cycle of real and sustainable economic growth would take x, y, and z (x years, y overdue systemic reforms and innovations, and $80 to 100 million in capital expenditure) the first variable has moved to x+1 (or more) years, and $90 to 120 million capex.
However, when intoning the latest dire over the local fortunes, it must not be forgotten that regional instability and deliberate aggressions are not the only causes of the country’s perennial malaise. One particular structural weakness (among a plethora of systemic problems) that lies beneath Lebanon’s economic crisis and financial collapse is the absence of institutionalized economic intelligence to guide decision-making. This shall be the focus of this analysis, because it might be the only ingredient in the cauldron of current disasters that the Lebanese people can mitigate and counteract.
For decades, Lebanon operated without a systematic framework to anticipate economic risks, simulate policy outcomes, or align fiscal, monetary, and sectoral policies. To immediately rectify a common misperception of local stakeholders: this structural weakness is not due to a total absence of data collection and analysis. Baque du Liban (BDL), the Lebanese central bank, continues to publish monetary and financial indicators; however, certain components have not been updated in recent years. The two ministries of finance and of economy equally have released reports and statistics, but publication has been absent in recent years. The Central Administration of Statistics has maintained monthly publication of the Consumer Price Index (increased from quarterly publication in 2007), yet other critical datasets have not been updated with the same frequency.
The issue, therefore, is not the complete absence of data, but uneven publication cycles and the lack of consistency and continuity across institutions. As a result, decisions have often been taken under pressure, without assessing broader economic trade-offs or long-term consequences.
In the Lebanese case, data informs intellectual insight, arguments, debates and roadmaps – and Executive’s economic roadmap is as much a proof in this pudding and other consultancy papers and civil society studies – but the local lesson is that it does not guide decisions. What is missing is not technical expertise, but an institutional system that connects data, analysis, and policy in a structured way. Economic intelligence is that system. It is the capacity to transform data into analysis, analysis into scenarios, and scenarios into informed policy choices.
What is economic intelligence?
The government’s decision in mid-February of this year to raise public sector wages and finance it through higher fuel prices and value added taxes, is an example for a fiscal decision, taken under pressure, that affects the entire economic system. Such measures influence inflation, household purchasing power, and business costs. These decisions cannot be treated as isolated fiscal adjustments. They require careful assessment of risks, projected outcomes, and trade-offs before implementation. That structured capacity to anticipate impacts and align policy with economic conditions is what defines economic intelligence.
Economic intelligence is a core function of modern governance. It strengthens economic resilience and enables informed decision-making, particularly in periods of uncertainty. While the term is not commonly used in Lebanon, the concept is central to how effective governments manage their economies.
Data alone does not generate clarity. Statistics describe what is happening, but they do not explain why it is happening, how variables interact, or what the consequences of policy changes may be. Inflation, for example, cannot be analysed and understood alone. A rise in prices may result from currency depreciation, supply shortages, monetary policy, fiscal expansion, or global commodity shocks. Without a framework that maps these relationships, policymakers operate with separate data points rather than an interconnected system. At its foundation, economic intelligence is the systematic collection and analysis of economic information to inform public policy. It requires observing variables across months and years, to allow policymakers to identify trends and cycles.
Beyond data, economic intelligence demands technical and institutional capacity. Governments must be able to construct and interpret economic models. Economic models are the analytical tools that simulate how key variables interact and how policy interventions may influence outcomes. These models build relationships between different variables and enable authorities to test alternative scenarios before reforms are implemented.
However, this alone is insufficient. Statistical agencies, ministries of finance, central banks, and planning entities must coordinate to operate within an integrated system were analysis flows directly into policy decision-making. Transnational entities such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as well as governments in developed and developing nations around the world, usually through either capacious ministries and central banks or independent economic expert councils, rely on structured modelling frameworks to produce macroeconomic forecasts and analysis. These exercises are not only statistical reports, but they also evaluate current situations and adverse scenarios, quantify risks, and help policymakers understand the consequences of different policy choices.
How economic models are built
Economic models may appear complex or technical. In reality, they are built through a logical and structured sequence. The process begins with reliable data. Governments and institutions gather information such as national income, inflation, employment, public finances, trade flows, interest rates, and sectoral performance. However, raw data alone is only descriptive and insufficient. It tells us what is happening, but not why it is happening or what may come. The next step involves asking the right questions about how impactful variables interact. For instance, how does inflation respond to changes in the national exchange rate, how might changes in taxation influence revenues, investment behaviour, and distributional outcomes, or how will energy prices affect production costs across sectors?
These relationships are not assumed; they are estimated using historical patterns and empirical analysis. From there, models include assumptions. Assumptions reflect expected trends in growth, fiscal policy, monetary conditions, demographic shifts, or external factors such as global commodity prices. Assumptions also often determine the direction of projections.
Once relationships and assumptions are defined, models generate scenarios. Scenarios may reflect current policies and expected trends. It may also project fiscal adjustment, economic reform, or an external shock. By comparing these outcomes, policymakers can assess potential consequences before decisions are made and implemented. The economic modelling results must be interpreted within institutional, political, and social contexts.
Economic intelligence shifts policymaking from reacting to problems toward planning. The difference does not lie in the amount of data available, but in the ability to use that data in a structured way. Economic models are tools that help governments project future deficits and assess, for example, whether public debt is becoming unsustainable or how shocks may affect different sectors. Their effectiveness, however, depends on whether institutions are capable of interpreting outcomes and integrating its findings into policy decision-making.
Lessons in economic intelligence
Economic intelligence is not exclusive to advanced economies. Many countries that have undergone structural transformation share a common institutional trait: they built systems that allowed them to anticipate economic developments rather than respond only after crises. Their success did not come from having more data, but from organizing that data into structured forecasting, coordinated planning, and scenario-based decision-making.
Japan is widely considered as one of the most advanced and coherent economic intelligence systems in the world. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry played a central role in shaping Japan’s economic strategy by aligning trade policy, technological development, and macroeconomic planning. Sectoral data, export performance, and global market trends were continuously assessed to guide strategic economic decisions. Economic intelligence was embedded across institutions: government agencies gathered and analysed macroeconomic indicators, corporations contributed real-time market information, and research institutions supported forecasting methodologies. This institutional coordination created an environment in which policy decisions were informed by forward-looking analysis rather than reactive adjustments.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) represents a different but equally instructive model. Aware of the risk of long-term oil dependency, the UAE embedded scenario planning and fiscal sustainability into its national development strategies. Diversification into logistics, aviation, tourism, financial services, and renewable energy did not emerge spontaneously, it was guided by structured assessments of global trade flows, demographic changes, fiscal projections, and energy price volatility. Oil revenues were treated as uncertain variables within macro-fiscal scenarios rather than permanent guarantees of growth. Economic intelligence, in this context, became a mechanism for risk management. By modelling revenue fluctuations and expenditure pressures, authorities align investment decisions with long-term resilience rather than short-term expansion.
Saudi Arabia provides another economic intelligence case through its Vision 2030 program, launched in 2016 as a national transformation strategy aimed at reducing reliance on oil revenues and expanding non-oil economic sectors. Vision 2030 is accompanied by detailed reform programs focused on fiscal sustainability, subsidy restructuring, labor market reform, and private sector development. Within this framework, economic modelling capacity expanded across ministries and public institutions. Fiscal sustainability analyses, energy price reform simulations, and labor market projections were used to guide the timing and sequencing of reforms. In this framework, economic intelligence became central to managing the transition from hydrocarbon dependence toward a diversified economic base.
In each of these cases, economic intelligence did not eliminate uncertainty. Japan experienced financial bubbles and economic slowdown. The UAE navigated oil price collapses and was heavily influenced by external shocks, notably the worldwide financial shock that translated into the Dubai experience of the Great Recession of 2007-9 and the just unleashed shock of war over the region. Saudi Arabia continues to face external volatility.
What distinguishes countries with economic intelligence capacities is not immunity from shocks, but the existence of institutional mechanisms designed to anticipate, model, and absorb them. Economic intelligence reduces strategic blindness, it allows governments to examine trade-offs before crises escalate, to test reform paths before implementation, and to connect long-term ambitions with measurable economic constraints. Save for the latest eruption of global and regional uncertainty by the ongoing rise in bloody, economically destructive, and by rational assessments needless warfare, the experiences of the most developed Arab peer countries in the past three or four decades illustrate how economic intelligence can shape economic strategy. The question, then is, where Lebanon stands.
Where is Lebanon today?
Lebanon’s economic landscape is characterized by high levels of informality, persistent political interference, and recurrent external and domestic shocks, from financial collapse to regional and internal instability. These conditions complicate policymaking and make anticipatory governance difficult. A significant share of labor and business activity operates outside the formal regulatory framework. When large segments of the economy are unrecorded or underreported, information and statistical pictures become incomplete. Hence, modelling and forecasting foundations are weakened as they depend on reliable and comprehensive data
Across different ministries and public institutions, key indicators are published, including Gross Domestic Product, the Consumer Price Index, B|DL balance sheets and money supply statistics. However, statistical methodologies are not always consistent, reports are not published regularly, and data updates can be delayed. Key datasets such as national accounts, labor, housing and educational statistics, and sectoral indicators often come with time lags that limit their usefulness for real-time planning and forecasting. Lebanon does not lack data, nor does it lack expertise but it may lack continuity in certain statistical series.
The country has capable economists, researchers, and skilled professionals across universities, public institutions, and international organizations. What is missing is institutionalization. Data may support discussions and debates, but it does not consistently drive decisions. Economic intelligence is not organized as a state-level system that systematically links data collection, analytical modelling, and policy decision-making. Neither in public institutions and the administration nor in independent private or civil organizations, one can find any permanent macro-fiscal modelling framework that regularly produces projections and reform or shock scenarios to guide medium and long-term planning.
The financial collapse intensified these structural gaps and exacerbated the use of short-sighted “fixes”. Multiple exchange rates emerged, and subsidies were reduced suddenly and without coordination, and fiscal measures were introduced separately and without a clear plan. This reflected not only political pressures, but also the absence of an integrated mechanism to assess economic trade-offs before policies were adopted. Crucial decisions, if they were not deferred endlessly and detrimentally because of political indecision or corrupt influences, were taken under urgency, often addressing immediate constraints without fully evaluating broader consequences.
Lebanon’s crisis, therefore, cannot be explained solely by misguided policy choices. It also reflects a deeper structural deficit: economic intelligence was not institutionalized in the past, and it remains absent today as a core function of governance. Without integrated data systems, consistent modelling capacity, and structured links between analysis and policy, reform becomes short-term and fragmented. And when reform is short-term and uncoordinated, instability tends to intensify rather than to ease.
Institutional reform
Lebanon’s economic collapse was not only the result of inadequate policy choices or external shocks. It was a result of a deeper institutional weakness, corruption, and absence of a coordinated system capable of transforming data into future planning. Without integrated statistics, consistent modelling frameworks, and structured links between analysis and policymaking, reforms are mismanaged, reactive, and short-term.
The way out of this misery begins by making economic intelligence a core function of how the state operates. This starts with improving the country’s data system. Lebanon needs harmonized statistical methods across ministries and public institutions, regular and predictable data releases, and better digital integration of administrative records such as tax and customs data, social security information, and sectoral reporting. Data production should not rely on temporary projects or external funding. It must be supported by clear institutional mandates, stable structures, and adequate resources. Strengthening the independence and technical capacity of the national statistical system is essential to restore credibility and rebuild trust in economic policymaking.
But data reform alone is insufficient. Economic intelligence also requires the establishment of permanent macro-fiscal modelling capacity within the public sector. This includes regularly produced projections, reform scenarios, and shock simulations that guide medium and long-term planning. Budget proposals, tax and public salary adjustments, subsidy reforms, and public investment strategies should be evaluated against transparent economic projections before being adapted and put into effect. Institutional coordination mechanisms must ensure that analysis informs decisions in a systematic rather than inconsistent manner.
Stronger data systems and modelling would improve fiscal planning, reduce uncertainty, and enhance policy credibility. They would also strengthen Lebanon’s negotiating position with international partners by grounding discussions in coherent and transparent projections, while encouraging both domestic and foreign investment. Economic intelligence is not an abstract concept and does not eliminate uncertainty nor guarantee stability; it lowers risk, improves policy sequencing, and increases accountability. Not institutionalizing economic intelligence, on the other hand, is an assurance of economic stupidity and can only indicate that inducing the Lebanese people’s misery is not only a foreign tool of violent aggression and oppression but also a local method.
