‘Industrialists have given up on the government’ – Sarraf

Jacques Sarraf is something of a godfather in Lebanese industry. The former head of the Lebanese Association of Industrialists runs Malia Group, which has 1,608 staff across the region — around a third of them in Lebanon. Executive sat down with him to discuss how the sector is developing.   How would you assess the mood of Lebanese industrialists right now? The problem is what is happening in our environment. Today we are suffering a lot from what is happening in Syria because Lebanon is connected to Syria and all our exports, whether to Iraq or the Gulf [go through Syria]. When Syria has a high risk with the transport this is the first big problem we are encountering. But if we look at different sectors within the environment of Lebanon, industry is still on the safe side. I would say that despite all that is happening in our environment,