Adjusting the Lebanese socio-economic debate: It is about growth, not debt

The size of Lebanon’s public debt — which at $48.5 billion amounts to 1.5 times the country’s gross domestic product, one of the highest debt to GDP ratios in the world — is a constant feature in the nation’s political and economic debates. It is blamed, rightly or wrongly, by the public, the politicians and even some economists for most if not all the socio-economic problems that Lebanon faces: youth unemployment, migration, immigration, the cost and reliability of power supply, high business costs, the lack of economic diversification such as low contributions from agriculture and manufacturing, and even red tape and corruption. The word “unsustainable” has been used since 1996 to describe Lebanon’s debt dynamics; since then, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey and Iceland, to name a few, have all defaulted, while enjoying significantly better ratings and hence more “sustainable” debt dynamics, ex-ante, than this