Lebanon’s long road to recovery amid financial implosion

Lebanon’s long road to recovery amid financial implosion

Lebanon is facing one of the world’s worst economic and financial crises in the last 150 years, according to the World Bank.

The Bank has deemed Lebanon’s economic collapse a “deliberate depression,” because of “continuous policy inaction” and “persistent and debilitating internal political discord.”

Lebanon’s three-year financial crisis has now pushed an estimated three-quarters of the population into poverty and food prices have gone up more than 11-fold.

Gross domestic product plunged to an estimated $20.5bn in 2021 from about $55bn in 2018, the kind of contraction usually associated with wars, according to the World Bank.

The Lebanese pound has lost more than 90% of its value, driving up the cost of almost everything in a country reliant on imports, and demolishing purchasing power.

Poverty rates are sky-rocketing in the population of about 6.5mn, with around 80% of people classed as poor, says the UN agency ESCWA.

Last September, more than half of families had at least one child who skipped a meal, Unicef has said, compared with just over a third in April 2021.

Lebanon’s financial system has suffered massive losses. The government estimates the overall losses at around $70bn.

Banks are paralysed, too.

Savers have been frozen out of US