Reading Time: 6 minutes Based on discussions with the two Lebanese gas station network operators—Medco and IPT—it seems fair to describe the first step of the journey into this particular private-sector infrastructure construction as based on the understanding that electric vehicles will make their appearances in Lebanon sooner or later, and that the country could ill afford to fall…
Private sector embarks on creation of EV charging-point infrastructure
Reading Time: 9 minutes The most eye-catching developments in mobility involve cars. The world is filled with cars; many of us sit in these machines for inordinate lengths of time every day. Surveys done in recent years in the United States found that the average person might spend upward of 17,500 minutes per year at the steering wheel or…
The importance of Lebanon’s macro and micro mobility
Reading Time: 3 minutes “Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.” Adam Smith Online economic literature has no ready answer to the question of whether Adam Smith had a deep personal bond with a canine, nor if he was an expert on animal behavior by the standards…
An analysis for 2013-2018
Reading Time: 4 minutes Banks included in Bankdata’s classification for alpha and beta banks with deposits respectively exceeding $2 billion and $0.5 billion are regarded by many international analysts and local banking industry observers to represent the top tiers within the Lebanese banking sector of 59 banks, comprised of 46 commercial banks and their 13 subsidiaries. Together, the 16…
CMA takes the lead on new exchange
Reading Time: 8 minutes While the capital markets show on the Lebanese national financial and economic stage had been one that, for years, fit above all a characterization of spurned overtures and unconstitutional delays in the implementation of declared and legislated measures, such as the transformation of the Beirut Stock Exchange (BSE), 2019 was kicking off with the boost.…
SME finance as driver of job creation and sustainable banking in Lebanon
Reading Time: 11 minutes Not long ago, at the April 2019 annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, one of the most-touted themes was the finance of small and medium enterprises. That a flagship event of the IMF in 2019 would highlight SME banking is not out of the norm—after all, SME finance has…
Lebanese banking in times of scarcity and reforms
Reading Time: 7 minutes They have never seen the likes of it. Elias Alouf experienced a Lebanese childhood and adolescence. He is today general manager of one of Lebanon’s most history-rich banks, BSL, which has 155 years of existence under its belt, but in his living memory Alouf never witnessed such an intense cabinet debate as he did in…
Can McKinsey’s Lebanon Economic Vision work for agriculture?
Reading Time: 7 minutes For what it is worth, the current outlook for Lebanon’s crop of traditional cereals, such as wheat, barley and maize, is not plastered with red flags. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says in its latest country briefing that weather conditions this winter were favorable and that estimates for the 2018 total cereal harvest were…
Health insurance in times of chronic diseases
Reading Time: 14 minutes For all the good that numbers can do for explaining economic and social trajectories, statistics provide limited utility. This is exacerbated into rapidly decreasing utility when social and economic issues are of immense complexity and have divergent, contradictory, or confusing data points attached to them. Things get even worse when an issue extends beyond economic…
Is design the winning ingredient in tackling Lebanon’s public sector restructuring?
Reading Time: 6 minutes At any meeting these days, from academic circles to business and banking conferences, one is likely to hear more than one allusion to Lebanon’s reform challenges. Much more. Whether it is the pesky theme of electricity or the issue of fiscal and structural reforms in the public sector, the big questions that matter today are…