Marwan Barakat

Marwan Barakat is head of research at Bank Audi. He sat down with Executive to discuss the issues currently facing Lebanon’s banking sector and possible solutions to the country’s fiscal woes. What is the sector most lent to in the Lebanese economy? The Lebanese economy is primarily a trade and service economy. These are the sectors that have the most important value-added. These are the sectors that are the most important drivers of growth. If you want to get technical, these are the sectors that have the lowest investment to value-added ratios. The breakdown of the bank lending over economic sectors is a mirror-image of the breakdown of GDP, by economic sectors. Banks lend to sectors that have [a high level of] economic value-added, so lending to the trade and service sector has grown significantly over the past few years. Lending over the first quarter of this year has been very