Yet another bad year

It has become customary, in the first few weeks of January, to lay out forecasts for the rest of the year. Analysts from the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to the World Bank get the chance to wipe clean their slate and begin a new framework, maybe with a little carried over optimism from the holiday season. Not so for Lebanon, where the omens from the international financial community do not augur well as, contemplating the undelivered promises of Paris 2, we are left to ponder the immediate future with few signals of any improvement, and frankly, not much momentum except hope, as most of the body politic focuses on the presidential possibilities and the never ending “regional circumstances”. The EIU report makes sober reading as it predicts Lebanon’s fiscal drama to continue unabated. The 2004 budget contained nothing that would change this trajectory, with the government set to overshoot