E Marwan Iskandar recently said that it is not realistic to think that Lebanon has not been affected by the global financial crisis, especially considering the public debt; what’s your take on this? Lebanon proved to be one of the least affected countries in the world because we had, after the election of the president, positive momentum coming from that election that really was more important than the international financial crisis. But definitely, if we didn’t have the global financial crisis it would have been even better. We cannot say we were not affected. We’re seeing right now that the country is witnessing good growth; all the figures on tourism, retail sales, car sales, are much better than last year. I agree with Iskandar when he says we have been affected, but at the same time maybe the statement is not complete, because it’s not saying that we were the
