Food for thought

Executive sat with Mounir Bissat, secretary of Syndicate of Lebanese Food Industries, to talk about the challenges and opportunities in front of the agro-industry subsector experienced in 2017.  E   What are the main challenges facing the industry sector in general, and the agro-industry specifically, in Lebanon? The first challenge is instability in the country. The current situation [concerning Prime Minister Saad Hariri] is worrisome. Almost 60 percent of our exports are to Arab countries, so anything that endangers this relationship will backfire very badly on the industry sector as a whole and on the food subsector specifically. In the Arab markets, the “made in Lebanon” [brand] has a premium for which consumers pay good money. The Lebanese agro-industry in these markets is well developed, because some of the big Lebanese companies have been present there for over 30 years, and put in a lot of effort and investment to