Reading Time: < 1 minute Dear Executive readers, It is our honor to present to you our end-of-year issue. The year behind us has been tumultuous worldwide, and especially for Lebanon – a small country that has many times carried its weight throughout international and regional crises. The tri-tragedy of the pandemic, the port explosion, and the collapse of the…
How long will the lights stay on?
Reading Time: 11 minutes The current state of the energy sector in Lebanon is worrying. Daily power cuts coupled with Electricite du Liban (EDL)’s chronic budget deficit, which has contributed to more than half of Lebanon’s public debt, makes it clear why reforming the sector is a top priority for the international community, and why it cannot be separated…
Vivisection of a trade heart
Reading Time: 10 minutes The short story of Lebanon’s vital trade of 2020 has three chapters but no resolution at the end. The tragic and dramatic lead character of the story is the Beirut port, which is revealed throughout the year as, in a succinct synopsis of this ballad, the open secret and potential epitaph of the Lebanese economy…
Retail on the run
Reading Time: 5 minutes From the perspective of consumer markets in Lebanon today, there are two classes of people: 1, those who can no longer carry out basic transactions in a consumer economy, and 2, those who are lucky enough to still go shopping, without knowing how long their luck will last. The large and growing first group includes…
Questions on data, policy design, and usefulness of assumptions
Reading Time: 11 minutes Economic man is a curious construct. Once thought to be a being superior to the common human in his pursuit of value creation and profit generation, the image of this specialized imaginary human subspecies has fundamentally changed. In fact, economic man has reached a point where some contemporary economists describe this model as emotionally dysfunctional—proposing…
Banking economists on the Lebanese banking sector
Reading Time: 14 minutes Bankers are people. Brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, spouses, children, cousins, clients, business advisors, financial partners, and friends of other Lebanese people. Given that over 25,000 individuals are employed in the local banking sector, with high percentages of them being women (in comparison to most not “traditionally female” professions) in a banking workforce that is composed…
The Lebanese banking sector, a long view
Reading Time: 10 minutes Lebanon’s geographic location and trading history dictate the need for three basic premises in terms of its Economic Policy: a strong and stable currency, advantageous trading facilities and low taxes. Michel Chiha Once there was a time when a Lebanese banker had a national vision. Whether a contemporary citizen agrees with this vision or not…
The madness of clowning around in an economic tornado
Reading Time: 8 minutes Two months after a blundering collage of new budgetary revenue measures drove people into a unified and spontaneous civil uprising, the state of Lebanon remains an unresolved mess. Six weeks of attempts by the political regime to uphold and reorganize what the people perceived as a corrupt system only made the country’s social and economic…
Analysis of banking sector results
Reading Time: 5 minutes The profitability of alpha banks – those with deposits above $2 billion – has grown in the third quarter of 2016 when measured by the improved return on average equity (ROAE). The ROAE ratio at end of September was almost two percentage points higher than a year earlier. This insight from quarterly figures released after…