When making the rounds through the Beirut Digital District (BDD) to assess how Lebanon’s entrepreneurship system is developing, there is a lot to observe. Over the past five years, there have been several exercises—usually with significant self-promotion and marketing—to map this emerging system in all its components. Invariably, such exercises seemed incomplete by the time…
A short conversation about how to prepare for the unknown
Farid Chehab is known for his innovative mind, having developed fresh advertising concepts throughout his career as a director of international ad agency Leo Burnett. Today, as honorary chairman and advisor to the board of Leo Burnett Beirut, Chehab appears to be more curious than ever about new concepts. Executive sat down with him to…
National poverty targeting and employment programs
The conquest of poverty is a core target of the World Bank. Even as it often is viewed—or maligned—as an instrument of capitalism and capitalist interests, the World Bank’s focus on poverty alleviation and on achieving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals means that the multilateral institution has a strong role to play wherever countries…
Hidden pathways to wealth for the Lebanese middle class
Certain roads to wealth for the middle class are less traveled in some lands but well known in others. Describing life insurance as an obscure path to savings would honestly be preposterous in most developed economies. Accounting for $2.7 trillion in premiums, or about 3.5 percent of global GDP, life insurance represents well over half…
Curses of poverty and affluence and the search for financial cures
Many believe that there is no such thing as too much money. At a closer look, however, the extreme abundance or absence of wealth both appear to be prime causes of anguish, albeit in incomparable proportions. Even moderate and temporary cases of poverty lead to all manner of problems, from stress and sleeplessness to ulcers…
Acting head of the ICC discusses the state of health insurance in Lebanon
At the end of April, the imposition of rules on guaranteed renewability (GR) in health insurance was introduced to the public under ministerial decree 186, issued by the Ministry of Economy and Trade (MoET). Executive sat down with Nadine Habbal, who heads the MoET’s Insurance Control Commission (ICC), to explore the implications of GR for…
The impact of the refugee crisis on the Lebanese healthcare system
Many column inches have been dedicated to the Syrian conflict and the resultant refugee crisis, the impact of which has been particularly felt in neighboring countries like Lebanon. Less acknowledged but deserving of recognition is the shocking reality that Lebanon’s healthcare system has performed with surprising efficacy in coping with this crisis. The much-maligned and…
Issues and concerns at the intersection of health and finance
In the opening line of American economist and public health expert Selma J. Mushkin’s paper titled “Towards a definition of health economics,” she pointed out two factors shaping the health issue: technological progress and increases in life expectancy. That was in 1958, a few years after the first wave of mass immunizations in the United…
A look into Lebanon’s healthcare
Health encapsulates economic activity that amounts to trillions of dollars by the—in this context crude—methodology of collating production of goods and services as gross domestic product (GDP). The Global Health Observatory of the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the world’s expenditure on health at $7.2 trillion (2015 estimate), or 10 percent of the world’s GDP.…
Promoting peace in the Mideast
Executive sat with Matahiro Yamaguchi, Japan’s ambassador to Lebanon, to discuss the country’s humanitarian aid to Lebanon, April’s CEDRE infrastructure investment conference, and prospects for peaceful resolutions to the region’s conflagrations. E The Japanese Embassy is now funding a United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)-designed project targeting job creation, productivity gains, and market access…