Q&A with Ziad Hayek on his and Gérard Charvet’s plan to overcome Lebanon’s financial crisis

ENAR

The arrival of a team by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Beirut for negotiations on the national need for financial assistance under a rescue package has sparked a wave of discussions on the task. This interest is fueled by widespread concerns that the latest official draft plan—based on a paper by international financial firm Lazard and presented by the Lebanese government on April 30—is only one of several possibilities, despite entailing numerous assurances of it being credible and “the only way.” In discussion are important alternatives for determining the Lebanese societal and economic trajectory for the coming decades, with updated alternative plans being put up for debate in the second week of May by, for example, local media company InfoPro or an outlook of expectations for the IMF negotiations floated under the umbrella of Carnegie Middle East. Executive spoke with Ziad Hayek, privatization and partnership specialist and, until February