Strongest linkage or missing links?

ENAR

The list of infrastructure needs is long, yet the wish list of these projects for Lebanon is still very rough, and as Executive noted last month, looks methodologically as messy as a disorganized teenager’s room waiting for an encounter with neatness. As the projects in the vast national infrastructure file may contain some old and technologically obsolete plans or plans of dubious national economic value, any realistic outlook for upgrading Lebanese infrastructure to the levels required for economic sustainability, plus social and environmental compatibility, is clearly more in the mid and long term than in the immediate or short term. This is without even starting to talk about the systemic challenges of managing projects in public-private-partnerships (PPPs) wisely and with great efficiency, nor about the prioritization, selection, and determination of time frames for specific projects. But within this general perspective, what is the outlook for Lebanese banks’ participation in the