Minister: No investors for Lebanon’s ailing power sector

Minister: No investors for Lebanon’s ailing power sector

Minister: No investors for Lebanon's ailing power sector

Minister: No investors for Lebanon's ailing power sector

Minister: No investors for Lebanon's ailing power sector

Lebanon's worsening economic crisis is making it increasingly difficult to attract investors for the country's ailing electricity sector. (File/AFP)

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Minister: No investors for Lebanon's ailing power sector

The energy sector has been a huge drain on state coffers for decades

The electricity company makes annual losses of up to $1.5 billion

Updated 16 July 2020

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BEIRUT: Lebanon's worsening economic crisis, which culminated with the tiny nation defaulting on its debt this year, is making it increasingly difficult to attract investors for the country's ailing electricity sector, the energy minister said Thursday.

This in turn makes it harder to reform the state-run sector as required by the International Monetary Fund and also for international donors to provide Lebanon with financial assistance, Raymond Ghajar said. Still, he said the government is working on reforming the highly subsidized sector and has made important steps in that direction recently.

Ghajar spoke to The Associated Press Thursday amid an electricity crisis that has plunged much of the country in darkness, adding to the gloom of a deepening economic and financial crisis in the country.

The cuts, stretching in some cases