Author: Sami Halabi

Exactly five months to the day that Lebanon’s last cabinet fell, a new one was formed last month on June 12. The abrupt formation after months of impasse took many onlookers by surprise and the reasons for the long-awaited but little-expected conclusion will no doubt continue to be debated for some time to come. Was it the insistence of Hezbollah to come to terms on how to split the pie, Prime Minister Mikati’s realization that he could not wait for the outcome of the Syrian uprising to see which side he would take, or merely that the daily loss of credibility that came with being unable to form a cabinet of supposedly ‘one color’ was no longer acceptable?

In any case, the Lebanese will have to play the cards they dealt themselves the last time they went to the ballot boxes. Let us not forget that we choose the MPs who voted in the last cabinet, and who chose Mikati to form this one; talking about coups is little more than crying over spilt and rotten milk. But, to see this government and its organs for what they are, and what they can realistically achieve, some deep reflection need occur.

The first order of business is a revision of our political definitions.

In 2005, between the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and our Syrian neighbors kindly withdrawing their army from our lands, we divided ourselves into two seemingly equal and persistently fractious parts. What may have been an apt way to represent the diverging points of view that March should not continue to be the basis by which we see this new government; to do so is to fall into the same duplicitous trap appealing to one or the other of two opposing monolithic ideological constructions.

Thanks largely to the ever-capricious Druze leader Walid Joumblatt, political movements March 14 and March 8 are now irrelevant semantic exercises. When you actually study the proposed public policies (where they exist) of the new cabinet’s de facto technical policymaking body, the Free Patriotic Movement, they do not differ greatly from the previous government’s policies.

Both advocate private sector participation in electricity and water; neither have real solutions for, or objections to the cartels they control in almost every sector of the economy — evident in the lack of interest in policies that would encourage entrepreneurship and erode the oligopolistic nepotism that sustains inflated pricing.

We should also be realistic about how much can be achieved when we continue to appoint ministers to our cabinets who have kept our economy at the mercy of cabals, affluent family networks and companies. It is not about how monochromatic your political palate may be, but that the same structure will produce the same results.

However, for the first time in a long time in Lebanon, today we have the semblance of a normal political landscape — a government and an opposition — and that is something we should seek to maintain. What the post-Syrian occupation period has taught us is that national unity governments do not work for two very simple reasons: ties to foreign actors trump nationalism and unity of purpose does not exist.

This time, the cabinet cannot point across the table as easily as it has in the past and say things are not getting done because “they don’t let us.” Even if there is sedition in the ranks — and we should expect some given the amount of bickering we have already seen from those supposedly on the same side — this should not delay the key policy decisions that need to be made from now until the 2013 elections.

The measure of this cabinet will be whether it can make decisions, for good or for ill, rather than crumbling from within. The cabinet’s first achievement — the drafting of a policy statement — should be viewed as little more than a publicity stunt; in practice, policy statements fail to represent anything the population can hold a government accountable for (just look at the last one for a case in point).

The next step will likely be to purge the ministries of opposition supporters in “Grade 1” posts and below. Such action is normal in any democratic society — not a “confrontation” as the opposition paints it — and allows the opposition to criticize and appeal to the population while washing their hands of any blame for stalling the implementation of policies from within. It seems clear at this point that the government will not use the courts to go after members of the opposition, most likely in order to keep their own skeletons safely out of sight. Therefore, the only thing that a true opposition would have to fear is if something were to be accomplished and the government received credit.

This will not be easy to come by. Lebanon’s problems are so deeply engrained in the sectarian and administrative system that resolving them will need to confront the very core of the status quo. We should not kid ourselves into thinking that in the span of roughly two and a half years that will happen. But what we can hope for is that a policy framework is implemented so that reform can begin to take place. Beyond geopolitics and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the country’s domestic problems need addressing, regardless of which camp takes them on. The onus is on the new cabinet. In anticipation of the direction this government’s policies may take, Executive lays out the framework for what needs to be done.

The Economy

The first order of business will be to make sure that purchasing power remains intact. The Lebanese lira cannot be allowed to devaluate, and that means confidence must be maintained. Executive does not agree with all the policies of the central bank, nor does it support in principle the idea that government officials should hold their positions for close to two decades. However, Riad Salameh, the current central bank governor, has maintained a stable currency, managed several major crises — including the financial crisis and the Lebanese Canadian Bank debacle — enjoys widespread political support and, whether it is based on reality or perception, symbolizes confidence in the market.

His term needs to be renewed, but it should be done so in accordance with legal norms and not ‘moving decrees’ or other so-called legal instruments that skew the already very blurry lines between the executive and the legislative bodies of government.

If the new government is not sworn in by the time the governor’s term is up, there is a mechanism whereby power can pass to his vice governors until the cabinet gets its act together, drafts its trivial policy statement, receives a vote of confidence and votes him back into office. At that point, and only at that point, should he be reinstated.

Once this occurs, the central bank needs to be clear about its policies and how much of the debt it is holding, and willing to hold. The debt cannot be monetized further, nor can the central bank continue to step in to be a market-maker whenever the commercial banks do not feel like pitching in. The logic of debt markets maintains that there is a price to pay for inefficiency and bad policies. Eventually, the government has to be forced to make tough decisions, like those occurring in Greece. The longer we wait, the worse it will eventually become in the end.

It is time for a New Deal à la Libanaise between the state and the commercial banks. We accept that if not for them we would have no stability in our money markets, and this would have a disastrous effect on our economy. But at this point, the interest the government pays to the banks is just keeping the debt cycle running, making the government even more ineffective, and increasing the risk for everyone further down the line.

A real renegotiation, not a ‘Paris IV’, between the banks and their largest obligator is in order now that there is a government in place that should be able to make decisions and follow on through, and there is no better person to negotiate this deal than Salameh himself. As fewer loans go to the government, more should go to the private sector in order to drive the engine that generates fair tax revenues to fund this debt restructuring.

We are not advocating that our industries be privatized, as is being suggested to our Mediterranean cousins by the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Doing so would require a clear and transparent strategy and a government elected with a mandate — not one that emerged from political collapse. It would require an adequate amount of competition. The scope of service coverage would also need to be ascertained, and that cannot happen when we do not know how many people need to be served, much less what their consumption is. Any privatization would require faith in the institutions that would oversee it, and this is still far off at best.

In the meantime, liberalizing industries such as electricity, water, air transport and telecommunications without selling the state’s assets needs to occur in order to build the platform needed to grow out of the present slump, and to create enough jobs to keep the population from emigrating.

Concensus on the census

In order to plan for these reforms we will need to know exactly where we stand. It is no longer acceptable that we do not have accurate or timely readings of basic economic and social indicators such as gross domestic product, inflation, poverty, diseases or even the country’s population. The taboo subject of conducting a simple census must be broached and resolved by this government, with questions of sect removed. An accurate reading of residents’ ages, incomes and other essential population statistics are needed before any government can claim it has a public policy. Once this government knows how many people it will need to serve, it can start planning to do so in a realistic and targeted manner. The starting point will be to use what already exists in terms of public policy plans, then improve and implement them.

Public services, taxes and revenue

The electricity plan passed by the last cabinet should be used as the basis for progress in the sector, which must be unbundled into production, transmission and distribution as planned but without its nepotistic elements. Under the current judiciary and regulatory frameworks, private sector participation in the production and distribution of energy will only result in sectarian overlords exercising more control over local populations through distribution contracts and control over production. That is why the electricity law — which establishes an independent regulator —  and others, such as the public private partnership law, need to be enacted and implemented by this government.

The only good thing about the energy shortfall is that there is room to grow in the right direction. Alternative energies such as solar, wind and waste recycling need to be transformed from marketing buzzwords to tangible and transparent industries run by innovators, not sects. If the banks are so keen on ‘going green’, than this is the first energy segment they should fund.

There is no room for waste: all our natural resources must be employed if we are to progress. Our rivers and our seas cannot continue to be dumping grounds for our sewage in a region where water is fast becoming the scarcest resource around. The complications and costs associated with building dams on our perforated geology can only be overcome if we integrate power and water as two industries that are, by force of nature, inextricably linked. Doing so will also allow us to power the plants we need to treat our water so that we do not continue to irrigate our crops with sewage that is creating untold health consequences for the population.

Of course, to build those plants and dams we will need a constant flow of cash and that can only come from one place: the people. Continuing to rely on the debt markets may be an easier and more politically prudent option, but a fair and efficient tax regime is the only way we will ever achieve a just and sustainable solution to our cash flow problem. It is time to wake up to the reality that taxes and fees for public services will need to rise or we will never be able to reform them. This will have to happen gradually for political, technical and social reasons but this government will have to be honest with itself and the people that the days of paying and receiving next to nothing in regards to essential public services are over.

It is simply unfair and unproductive to tax the rich and the poor indirectly through value added tax and excise taxes, while making excuses about a lack of infrastructure to impose or collect progressive and direct income taxes. People need to feel like they are paying for government in order to get angry enough to hold it accountable when it squanders their money. The culture of indirect taxes that has taken hold of this country has separated the people from their government while putting holes in their pockets.

As such, this government cannot continue to view telecommunications as a cash cow for the country. An indirect tax rate of 58 percent on phone bills is not a proper way to fund a government. Instead, the current telecommunications law needs to be applied, in full, and the private sector needs to be allowed to participate on an equal footing with the public sector. If there are parts of the law that need to be amended it can be done through a legal process. The need for such amendments should not be used as an excuse to skirt the obligation of implementing a law that comes from the elected representatives of the people.

With such reform, taxes in the sector could be shifted from being a burden on the consumer to a cost of doing business for private companies that compete against each other, and in so doing lower prices and provide more far-reaching services. The people, not the politicians and their companies, should get something out of privatization if it occurs. There is nothing wrong with a public share of the telecom industry — the same way there is nothing wrong with a private share — so long as the sector works for the people and their businesses and not for the interests of the zaims.

Once these basic elements of a modern economy are in place, the jobs needed to stem the brain drain will appear. But that will not be enough. The most elemental economic responsibility of any government is to create decent work for all citizens. This cannot be done without a national strategy for job creation from school to the workplace. That strategy must be as realistic as our expectations are for this government. Not everyone can be an employee in a high-value knowledge based industry. Some will need to be employed in vocational and industrial jobs, which are no less meaningful or important to the progress of the country.

The first element of that national strategy will need to involve a break with old habits. The government cannot keep funneling the poor into the army and the security services. It must create viable alternatives.

Similarly, qualified people should no longer be discouraged from working in the public sector. Our ministries and administrations are not tools for this government to practice patronage and a sectarian division of favors for votes. This government must formulate a strategy for civil service reform that is fair to those who have dedicated their lives to serve the nation and those who suffer from the lack of services.

The unqualified need to be trained and the incompetent need to go to make room for those who can do the job and deserve their position. Only then may we rightfully be able to expect a decent level of service from our public institutions.

The courts and corruption

Without question, these national strategies will mean nothing if they are not implemented and if the government is not held accountable. Despite suggestions to the contrary, it is not up to ministers whether or not they apply the laws.

The vote of confidence they receive from the Parliament obliges them to abide by the will of the people. The reason they have not done so, or have done so selectively, is the judiciary is so inefficient and politicized that we must rely on international tribunals to take up Lebanese affairs.

In order to address the problems of a judiciary that is anything but just, combating corruption must be a priority. The basic institutions for combating corruption have consistently been ignored by every post-civil war government to date, barring the implementation of one now-defunct presidential complaints office and a committee no longer in place.

Basic institutions, such as a national anti-corruption body and an ombudsman office, are essential, but so too is the reform of the current oversight bodies such as the Court of Accounts, the Civil Service Board and the Central Inspection Board. As long as these institutions and their budgets are assigned and overseen by the Prime Minister’s office they remain vulnerable to coercion and manipulation.

Learning to stand

It is naïve to think that all these basic elements of responsible government will be established by a cabinet that is manned and controlled by ex-warlords and businessmen with vested interests. But we should at least expect be moving in the right direction.

What many do not realize is that the larger issues — Hezbollah’s weapons, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and sectarianism as a whole — are linked to a dysfunctional economy and government. A small country constantly subjected to barrages of local and international interests will struggle to protecting its national interests. But some geographically susceptible countries — like Singapore and Switzerland — have protected themselves by creating a strong and sustainable economy, which they use to shield against outside political manipulation.

Whether we can achieve such a reality will depend on how much the Lebanese are willing to accept the excuses that will, in all likelihood, arise when the tough decisions need to be made. As with the last government, it is entirely possible that this new government will attempt to hide behind concocted alibis and scapegoats to justify the continued ineptitude of the Lebanese state.

But before jumping to criticism, the new government is entitled to an opportunity to prove itself — give them a chance to do their job. And if they do not, at least we now know, without doubt, who to hold accountable, because there are no excuses left.

First published in Executive Magazine’s July 2011 issue

To describe Lebanon’s telecommunications sector as politicized would be an understatement on par with saying the summer of 2006 was eventful, or that Hezbollah and Israel enjoy a good game of tag from time to time. Since its heyday atop the pyramid of Arab telecommunication industries in the early to mid-1990s, the sector has become little more than a wounded lamb at the mercy of the packs of hyenas roaming Lebanon’s political plains. Today the sector has the dubious distinction of having the slowest average Internet speed in the world and the highest prices for those same services in the Middle East.

“We are lacking so many basic things and the entire root cause of our despair is the governance of the sector,” said Riad Bahsoun, telecom expert at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) –– the arm of the United Nations that deals with information communications technology. “It’s the domination of politics over performance. It’s the subjection of intelligence to force and collective interests to individual will. This is called tyranny and despotic governance.”

This high-handedness was on full display in May, when the lack of reform and the hyper-politicized decision-making in the sector culminated in an embarrassing encounter between Charbel Nahas, then the telecom minister allied with the March 8 coalition, and hundreds of members of the security forces, who prevented the minister’s team from entering one of the ministry’s buildings in the Adlieh district to dismantle a non-commercial cellular network that had been operating in parallel to the country’s two commercial operators.

The confrontation apparently came about when Abdulmenaim Youssef, who is allied with the opposition March 14 coalition and heads Lebanon’s incumbent fixed-line public operator OGERO, requested that the head of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Ashraf Rifi, who is also allied with the opposition, guard OGERO’s property from the ministry’s prying eyes.

OGERO was created in 1972 and controls the country’s fixed-line services as well as its current Internet infrastructure. It acts under the “supervision of the telecom ministry”. However, it is also financially and administratively independent, in accordance with the law that created it, and answers to the directorate general of operations and maintenance at the ministry, which has also been headed by Youssef since 2007.

Immediately after the Adlieh incident, the political mudslinging began. The convoluted arrangement over who had authority to see, dismantle, own and operate the network descended into quarrelsome disputes over the constitutionality of the move, the civilian rule of the security forces, wiretapping, illegal phone lines and so on, until the issue finally faded into the background. Lebanon emerged from the fracas minus one favorably regarded and technocratic interior minister (Ziad Baroud, who resigned following the incident) and no further along the path to reform.

Legal arguments aside, the cellular phone network Nahas was attempting to confiscate from OGERO was given to the Lebanese government as a gift in 2007 by the Chinese government, through the multinational telecommunications company Huawei. At the time, Lebanon was preparing to liberalize the telecommunications market and introduce Liban Telecom, a legally mandated government-owned body with a corporate framework that would eventually replace OGERO and take on most of its assets. The gift provided the Chinese with an opportunity to enter the market as it was opening up and to prove that its companies were capable of running a high quality network. At the time, the technicalities of the donation were negotiated by OGERO under Youssef’s purview as director general of the company.

According to ITU’s Bahsoun, when questions were raised about whether the network should be monitored by the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA), Youssef said that it would be used solely for testing purposes and hence, as a non-commercial network, it would be overseen by himself and not the TRA. Youssef did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The gift, however, did not arrive until 2009, when the current Energy Minister Gebran Bassil was heading up the telecommunications ministry and plans to set up Liban Telecom had effectively been scrapped due to political wrangling. By this time a row had erupted regarding a new wiretapping law that would take authority over such issues away from the Information Branch of the ISF and split it between the ministries of justice, telecommunications and the interior. In 2007, after the network had been pledged, the interior minster put in a request to the Council of Ministers, Lebanon’s cabinet, to allow the Information Branch to use the network for intelligence purposes. The permission was denied.

“In my opinion this was rejected in turn by the Information Branch,” said Bahsoun, though he stressed that he could not confirm such information. “The Information Branch probably decided to [use it] anyway without formal legal coverage,” he added.

Whether or not the network was used for intelligence purposes will likely be an ongoing source of bickering among Lebanon’s politicians, but the capabilities for such an operation were certainly there. The network was widely reported to have a capacity of 50,000 lines that could have been employed outside the two existing cellular networks. Speaking to the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation last month, opposition Future Movement Member of Parliament Ghazi Youssef said the network contains a total of only 15 operational lines.

“They say that the OGERO equipment is made up of 62 base stations [part of the cell phone network which handles communications between phones and the network] in addition to the core; the intelligence system that manages all of this is there,” said Imad Tarabay, secretary general of the Lebanese Telecom Association (LTA), which represents Lebanon’s private-sector data and Internet providers.

According to Bahsoun, a staunch opponent of Minister Nahas, this equipment was consolidated at some point at building in Adliyeh and this allowed for a more powerful network which he suspects played a part in uncovering some of the Israeli spy networks in the country over the past several years.

“If this network is operating 15 lines, why does it need 400 people to protect it?” he asked rhetorically, referring to the reported number of security forces present at the building when Minister Nahas tried to enter. “The truth is that the Information Branch could not accept in any way the minister of telecommunications or a team apart from theirs to inspect the equipment.”

3G connection

What ultimately emerged from the fiasco is that even if the minister was attempting to lift the lid on any alleged wrongdoing, he was also trying to speed up the implementation of the contentious 3G mobile Internet projects that he launched last January after the cabinet had collapsed, in conjunction with mobile operators Alfa and mtc.

As Executive reported in March, there have been numerous unanswered questions over the legality of the 3G project, due to the fact that it was launched while a caretaker government was in place, and neither the legally required licenses nor frequencies from the TRA and the cabinet have been granted to the companies that will conduct it. Moreover, the prospect of a faster, better service being provided by the public sector, without private sector access to the market, has fueled a campaign against the plan, spearheaded by Tarabay, chief executive of the private sector company Cedarcom and distributor of the Mobi wireless Internet service. Tarabay co-owns the company with the son of opposition MP and former Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade, and contends that Nahas is attempting to nationalize the telecommunications sector.

He says he has prepared legal files against the telecommunications ministry and is prepared to submit them to the Shura council, Lebanon’s highest court. This comes after an unsuccessful attempt at arbitration through the TRA that, perhaps predictably, did not take action against the ministry it depends on for financing; the TRA spent several months this year without the money to pay its employees.  The TRA also did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Most of the controversy surrounding the legality of 3G stems from two contentious issues. The first is telecom Law 431, which states that licenses and frequencies must come from the cabinet and the TRA respectively. Second is unfair competition as a result of exorbitant tax discrepancies between public and private service providers, which would likely come about if the project moves forward.

With regards to Law 431, former Telecommunications Minister Nahas’s response has always been the law is not applicable, ostensibly because it has not yet been implemented in its entirety. His position got a boost last month when he announced that he had seen a Shura council decision stating that the law had been “suspended” because of Article 51, which states that “all applicable [previous] legal or regulatory provisions remain effective until the enforcement” of the law itself. Translation: the law and all the institutions created under its jurisdiction, such as the TRA and Liban Telecom, would also be technically suspended. As Executive went to print the ruling had not yet been made public.

“Law 431 is applicable and being implemented,” insisted Imad Hoballah, acting chairman of the TRA, at a press conference intended to respond to the minister’s statements last month. Hoballah went on to describe the licenses and frequencies that the TRA had given out over its four-year term, though he admitted that these had been handed out before the Shura council decision. Previously, the Shura council has ruled against the ministry and in favor of the TRA but there is speculation this ruling could be particularly pernicious for the TRA.

“We respect the decisions of the Shura council and we will follow them,” Hoballah said, insisting that the decision does not negate the entire law. Asked what the TRA would do if the telecommunications ministry issued 3G frequencies that the regulatory agency is legally mandated to allocate, he declined to comment, saying only that if the telecommunications ministry decides to go ahead without allowing the private sector to participate, “no one can stand in its way.”

“Fundamentally, the TRA has eight months left,” contended Antoine Boustani, an advisor to Minister Nahas, speaking to Executive last month. Boustani’s position, like that of Nahas, is that because the law that created the TRA is not fully implemented, “it’s already obsolete”.

“We don’t decide to implement the law; the Council of Ministers decides. We are moving forward on the basis of the authority of the ministry. When they say they want to implement the law [in full] we are ready,” he said, denying that the ministry officially seeks to shut down the TRA.

“I’m not stopping until I get my rights,” Tarabay snapped back defiantly, adding that he will file court cases against the ministry but is waiting to see the Shura council decision to “fine tune” his lawsuit in line with the status of Law 431.

But according to Boustani, Tarabay will soon have little to complain about. Last month he told Executive that the ministry plans on leveling the playing field between the private sector and public sector by decreasing the taxes on the former by “50 to 55 percent.” Asked whether the private sector will be allowed to enter the market, he said “byiswa” — an Arabic word suggesting that something on this front could happen and would be a positive — though he couldn’t confirm or deny it. “We will ask for it [in the cabinet]; we don’t have a problem,” he said, adding that such a request “is liberalization, not privatization.”

He also said that a long-awaited policy statement that was promised by the minister one year after he took office would soon be issued. The issue has become a major talking point for opponents of Nahas, including the TRA, who say that he has no policy and works according to his own whims. Nahas’s response has always been that the ministry’s policy is a matter of “practice not paper.”

Of course, Boustani is not an advisor to the newly appointed Telecommunications Minister Nicholas Sehnaoui, but the latter is widely seen as Nahas’s protégé and has already stated that he will follow the same course as the previous minister. If he adopts Nahas’s purported policy — which Boustani confirms is “almost done” — and makes it public, it would mean that the sector will have a general set of rules mandated by the ministry under Law 431 for the first time since former Minister Gebran Bassil was in office from 2008-09. This would be significant, as it would provide an indication of the minister’s intentions vis-à-vis the many contentious issues in the sector.

Money to make

Bickering aside, the ministry has been pressing on with the 3G project, as have both Alfa and mtc. The attempted takeover of the telecom equipment by Charbel Nahas in May can be seen as part of this aggressive push by the ministry to make the 3G project a fact on the ground as quickly as possible, before legal issues potentially complicate such plans.

According to Bahsoun and Tarabay, the equipment at Adlieh can technically be upgraded and used as part of the 3G rollout currently being undertaken by Huawei and mtc. Huawei won the contract to build the new network for Mobile Interim Company 2, the state-owned cellular telecom company managed by mtc. The Chinese company’s winning bid was valued at $25.6 million (not including a $2.7 million control center that will be built by Nokia), $10.6 million less than their counterpart Ericsson, who won the 3G contract at Mobile Interim Company 1, the state-owned cellular telecom company managed by Alfa. Both Bahsoun and Tarabay estimate the value of the third network’s equipment, once upgraded, to be around $10 million, (thus making up the difference between the two bids).

Both Alfa and mtc stand to benefit greatly from the 3G project, on top of the revenues they already garner from the talkative Lebanese who pay 58 percent in taxes on all telephone services. Zain’s mtc, for instance, has increased their net earnings from $22.1 million in 2008 to $46.1 million under their current management contracts. In January, under the caretaker government, Minister Nahas renewed their contracts for a year.

“We extended 12 months when the minister thought that if these two companies are going to go into the 3G project they need security. They said they need more than two to three months to do such things,” said Boustani.

India-Middle East-Western Europe III

So with the two companies locked in a yearly contract, the Shura council ostensibly on the ministry’s side with respect to Law 431, the TRA hobbled and toothless and Tarabay’s cases needing some time to come to fruition, there seems to be little stopping the 3G project from materializing sometime around the end of the summer. Except for one hitch.

In 2007 Lebanon entered an international consortium to construct a submarine fiber-optic cable from Europe to India —

called the India-Middle East-Western Europe 3 (IMEWE3). Lebanon has already invested some $53 million into the construction of the underwater sea cable to carry traffic and unclog the international bottleneck Lebanon has long suffered.

“Capacity has to be met at all levels,” said Ghassan Hasbani, chief executive of the International Operations group of Saudi Telecom Company (STC), which is part of the consortium and is using the cable. “If you have a high speed local connection network and clogged capacity on your international gateway, then access to international content becomes very slow. These have to come together and the more connectivity there is in the country the better the prospects of lower pricing, of routing for traffic, and the better accessibility you have to the rest of the Internet globally.”

According to a source from the consortium, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, the contract between Lebanon and the consortium was signed by “OGERO Telecom”, which is not the official name of OGERO. At the time, the creation of Liban Telecom seemed imminent due to political consensus under the Saniora government and then Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamade. Director General Youssef and the minister were ensconced on the same side of the political fence, enabling them to lay the groundwork for their political camp’s control of the sector. By December of last year the cable was ready to go and all other member countries of the consortium had started to use it. But by then the political stars of the telecommunications ministry were anything but aligned.

Engineers at Alfa have already confirmed that the 3G project will need IMEWE3 to function. Currently Lebanon’s international connection is through the Cadmos cable connecting the country to Cyprus, through which Boustani admitted a bottleneck would occur if there was a large amount of traffic as would be the case if 3G were introduced. The Cadmos cable also leaves Lebanon at the mercy of Cyprus for international bandwidth.  This is ominous as trouble has been brewing between the two countries over a maritime economic zone agreement between Cyprus and Israel.

Official data is not available, but most estimates are that Lebanon is currently using 2.5 gigabits (Gb) of legal bandwidth. However, Boustani says that the Cadmos cable has 40 Gb available for use after its recent upgrade. IMEWE3 has an initial 30 Gb and can be updated to 1.4 terabits. Thus, according to Hoballah, Lebanon is currently blocking 97 percent of its international bandwidth.

In order to activate the IMEWE3 cable it is necessary to log onto the consortium’s system with a secret code, which according to a consortium source is something only Youssef has the details of.  Again Youssef did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“We paid a total of some $53 million and we are not using [it] because one person [Youssef] says ‘I don’t want to’ and the collective interest becomes subject to one person,” said the ITU’s Bahsoun.

According to Boustani, the ministry sent a commencement order to OGERO to oversee the project and has since asked for the ownership of the IMEWE3 to be transferred back to the ministry; this is what Youssef has refused to do. “There were some people who were supporting him politically. It used to be former Prime Minister Fouad Saniora but I don’t think today that Saniora will cover him. We hope that this government will lift this political cover so we can work,” he said.

What will also need to occur is the negotiation of an agreement with a European operator to purchase capacity in order to transfer information from Marseille, France (where the cable ends), so that traffic to and from the rest of the world via Europe can come into the cable. The going price for such traffic is about $2 per megabit per second (Mbps) per month, which means that 10Gb of capacity would cost some $20,000 per month. Given that the cellular network alone generates some $3 million each day in Lebanon, this is a relatively trifling sum.

If Lebanon wants full redundancy, in case the European side is cut, they can also negotiate the same contract in India, at the cable’s other pole. Such negotiations take about a month to complete but again this would need to go through Youssef’s office at the ministry as long as he maintains control of the post of director general. Nonetheless, Boustani says the ministry is in direct contact with France Telecom discussing such an agreement.

Since it was Youssef who negotiated and carried out the IMEWE3 project with the consortium, when the telecommunications minister contacted its management committee to try and wrest control of the cable, the consortium became predictably confused. In the end they decided to take a “hands off” approach, according to the source. Of course the fog of Lebanese laws, their seemingly inconsistent application, and the autonomy of public institutions, especially OGERO, has not helped.

“Youssef sent a letter to the consortium telling them not to hand [it] over to the minister, and he does not have the right to do so,” said Boustani.  He would not comment on whether the ministry would take legal action as a result.

Even if the consortium is convinced to transfer control, the procedure stipulates that when OGERO hands control of the cable over to the ministry it initially does so through the Directorate of Operations and Maintenance, whose head stamps the handover and transfers the asset to the minister’s office. As Youssef himself holds that post, there seems to be scant chance of that happening.

According to Boustani, at the meeting of Arab telecommunications ministers held in Beirut last month the ministry received important political backing that he thinks will see the IMEWE3 handover soon, although this could not be independently verified. This would not solve Lebanon’s Internet woes outright, however. “Even if IMEWE3 is activated, what use will it have if the ministry of telecommunications sells the international E1 line [2 Mbps] to [private sector] service providers for $3,000, while costs on them is less than $30?” asked Tarabay.

“The Internet cost to the consumer will remain high,” he said, unless the price of E1 falls and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have access to the bandwidth. Lowering prices requires a decree to be issued by the cabinet because the sector is still not liberalized as per Law 431. Bandwidth will then need to be handed out by the ministry under the directorate general of operations and maintenance — again Youssef’s office.

But while Youssef may be a major roadblock to better Internet, other projects will also need to be completed to see the sector reach an acceptable global standard. According to Jean Gebran, projects director at Consolidated Engineering and Trading Company (CET), the Court of Accounts, the government’s public sector auditor, gave final approval in May to a project to construct the telecommunications ministry’s $40 million fiber-optic backbone throughout the country. CET and Alcatel will carry out the project, which has already begun in the South and the Bekaa valley. It is expected to take 16 to 24 months to complete, according to Gebran.

Furthermore, the ‘last mile’ connection from the fiber to homes will also need to be completed. But in the short-term, even without these projects, 3G service can technically run and allow speeds in the range of 21Mbps, compared to the current average of 0.1, even if this may kill private sector participation in the sector.

Time for action

With a new cabinet and a new minster that are both technically on the same side, there is some renewed hope amongst those in the sector that the coming period will be less fraught with conflict. A government of a single color may be more willing to see off some of the old opposition guard (starting with Youssef), but who they choose as a replacement is entirely another matter, and what the market will look like after any reshuffle of institutions, laws and people may just end up resulting in the same stagnation that has plagued the industry for over 15 years.

“It is very difficult if you ride a donkey to reach a high summit, even if you choose the direction,” said Bahsoun, referring to Lebanon’s telecom policy decision makers. “It’s impossible to reach it if you let the donkey choose the way. However, if you carry the donkey you will die. We are still carrying donkeys and paying for their food.”

But today one side of the political divide can no longer blame the other for obstructing policy implementation. “You don’t have two sides anymore so you don’t have anyone to delay,” said Boustani. Thus, there are no more excuses.

First published in Executive Magazine’s July 2011 issue.

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The failure of a government to actually govern can be overlooked, and even ignored, when a country’s economy somehow manages to independently cook up growth, as Lebanon’s has, churning out annual increases of gross domestic product in the range of 7 percent for half a decade. During these years many seemed to regard the economy’s continued subscription to miraculous performance as assured by God while the fundamentals needed to sustain this growth, such as infrastructure, were rotting beneath their feet.

Today, however, the boardrooms’ belief that Lebanon’s soaring growth is immune to the laws of gravity that apply to the rest of the world has disappeared, as first quarter results for 2011 clearly show that the country is entering an economic downturn. And now — with the fiscal forecast inclement and a government necessary to navigate the storm — it becomes painfully apparent how the intransigence of the competing political camps has left the Lebanese on a quickly sinking ship. Lebanon’s sectarian political divisions and the grinding stalemates they produce are at the root of the vast majority of the nation’s tangled shortcomings.

Executive does not pretend to have the formula to resolve the impasse and get a government formed and functioning again. Instead, the following report examines the most critical issues facing the economy, and if those whose responsibility it is to govern do manage to form a government that is actually empowered to enact and follow through on policy and reforms, what some of these should be in order to cushion the current fall and restart growth.

Counting in the dark

Typically, the International Monetary Fund issues its annual forecasts for the Lebanese economy around October, but this year it waited an extra six months to come out with a figure of just 2.5 percent real growth for 2011, down from an estimated 7.5 percent last year, signaling the end of the country’s economic honeymoon. The finance ministry has also signed off on the 2.5 percent estimate.

At a press conference last month, IMF Resident Representative in Lebanon Eric Mottu explained to Executive that the estimate took into account that, even if a cabinet was formed by the second half of the year, it would not be enough to cover the losses incurred during the first half of the year. The IMF’s growth projection for Lebanon is much lower than the fund’s regional estimate of 4.1 percent. However, not everyone agrees with them.

Real GDP growth in Lebanon

“The IMF have been wrong a number of times in their predictions,” said Marwan Iskandar, economist and chairman of Banque de Crédit National, before predicting that growth would be between 4 and 5 percent. “They used to tell us five or six years ago to reduce the burden of public debt because otherwise we [would be] in dire straits, and then they changed their tune to reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio,” he said.

One reason for things being better than the predictions could be Lebanon’s sizeable informal economy, which is not factored into IMF statistics. Iskandar said that staff at the fund’s sister organization, the World Bank, told him that they estimate the ‘informal’ economy to be around 30 to 35 percent of the size of the formal economy, though World Bank officials have denied to Executive making such assertions.

“They don’t want to say it publicly because it would make what they are saying irrelevant,” said Iskandar. “It would make the public debt something close to the [size of the] economy.”  Currently Lebanon’s debt-to-GDP ratio is widely believed to be somewhere over 130 percent. Jad Chaaban, acting president of the Lebanese Economics Association and professor of economics at the American University of Beirut explained that developing countries usually have an informal economy at about 20 to 30 percent and Lebanon was “above average.”

“The problem is we are not [even] measuring the formal economy,” he said.

Indeed, to make an accurate forecast one would need to know the base from which that forecast is being made. As Executive went to print official GDP figures were only available for 2009, which saw 8.5 percent real GDP growth. Because economies naturally evolve between periods of positive and negative growth or contraction, until the end of last year Lebanon’s economy appeared to be experiencing what economists call a “soft landing”, a pseudonym for the graphical representation of cyclical economic slowdown resembling a plane coming into land; if the IMF and the finance ministry are now to be believed, it looks instead like the country is going into a nose-dive.

Main macroeconomic indicators

“The IMF uses official government figures and they don’t contest them,” said Nasib Ghobril, head of economic research at Byblos Bank. “It might be optimistic; we still don’t know.”

The level of uncertainty has fueled speculation and has understandably resulted in a lack of confidence in the system. Reforms purportedly underway include a program, aided by the European Union, at the Central Administration for Statistics (CAS) to transfer the job of comprising national accounts away from the prime minister’s office and to the CAS. Yet how long that will take is anyone’s guess. In the meantime “it’s all a walk in the dark,” said Chaaban.

Without accurate and timely statistics, especially during times of political transition, those with an interest in using the economic situation to their own advantage — and there are many — have the upper hand. “People who want to make the numbers look bad, lower GDP growth and those who want to make things look good, make the numbers high. GDP growth becomes a signal for confidence in government and the country; same goes for the banks and financial sector,” said Chaaban.

Thus it is hardly surprising that public officials and the media from across the political spectrum have been eager to comment on the economic situation without having any real indication of just how bad things are, or could become. Those on the side of the recently deposed March 14 coalition have been quick to point out that March 8’s stalled efforts to form a cabinet have destroyed the economy, while the latter camp has accused the former of over-reacting to make the situation look worse that it actually is.

In fact, both camps are relying on the same scattered indicators that economists have come to depend on when trying to gauge Lebanon’s performance, due to a lack of national accounts which are themselves “the best available estimates”, according the CAS’s document explaining the national accounts reform program.

Adding to the hodgepodge of numbers and forecasts, the International Institute of Finance (IIF) — a global association of financial institutions — estimated that growth in Lebanon would reach 4 percent at the unveiling of their Middle East regional overview forecast in Beirut on May 15. When questioned by Executive about why the estimate was so different from the IMF’s, Garbis Iradian, deputy director of the Africa Middle East Department of the IIF, said the forecast was “probably optimistic” and assumed there would be cabinet in place in “a few months.”

The debt: the elephant in the room

So while there are scant reliable means to measure the latter half of the debt-to-GDP ratio, there is ample documentation regarding the former, and it is soaring; currently the Lebanese public debt is pegged at $52.6 billion. In the first quarter alone the deficit rose almost $1.1 billion, nearly double that of the corresponding quarter in 2010, taking the primary balance from surplus to deficit. Revenues are also dropping, particularly in excise taxes on gasoline and property taxes, which are expected to fall by 57 and 17 percent, respectively, according the IIF’s forecasts, given a slowdown in construction and cuts to the gasoline excise tax this year.

This has caused jitters about the government’s ability to finance the debt, and if real fears caught on in the market then borrowing to continue funding public services would become more costly, which could in turn erode confidence to the point that the currency’s stability would be put in question, though Banque du Liban (BDL), Lebanon’s central bank, is currently well positioned to defend the lira, at least in the near-term.

Additionally, the previous government’s mantra — that the debt was sustainable due to a decreasing debt-to-GDP ratio — has now gone out the window.

“The economy is not growing as fast; when it was growing strong, we saw a big improvement in debt-to-GDP,” said Saad Azhari, chairman and general manager of BLOM Bank. “Now I don’t think we can see this improvement because of the situation. We hope that [it] does not last long and we can have again stronger growth.”

Freddie Baz, chief financial officer and strategy director at Bank Audi, remarked: “If at 185 [debt-to-GDP ratio] we were not really concerned about the ultimate outcomes, its not at 130 or 140 that we will start being concerned.”

The relationship between the banks and the debt has seen worse days and even with the current economic downturn, and the expected rise in debt-to-GDP, Lebanese government debt still appears marketable, though at a somewhat more costly rate.

Last month the government rolled over $1 billion in Eurobonds in two tranches: the first for $650 million expiring in 2019 with a yield of 6 percent, and the second valued at $350 million maturing in 2022 and carrying a yield of 6.475 percent. The last Eurobond rollover in November 2010 carried yields carrying a weighted coupon average of 5.44 percent and an average time-to-maturity of 9.21 years, the lowest ever, indicating new upward pressure on debt financing.

“It’s not us who decide the government will pay 6 or 7 or 8 percent, it’s the market,” said BLOM Bank’s Azhari.

Even if private demand for government debt dries up, it is likely that the BDL would itself step in as it has done in the past to buy up debt and keep the market stable. “Their goal is to ensure stability so they do what is needed. But this is something the IMF is totally opposed to and it’s a burden on the central bank’s income statement, which no one sees except the IMF,” said Ghobril.

“They will do it and of course this is not the best way,” added Iskandar. “It is the most inflationary way but under duress it is the one way to [keep] the government running.”

At present BDL does not release its total holdings of government debt but instead a number of different figures that include vague statements such as “claims on the public sector”, which do not represent the actual debt. According to the Association of Banks in Lebanon, treasury bill holdings of the central bank, which it also issues, stood at $9.67 billion or 18.4 percent of the total debt at the end of the first quarter. Using a crude method of subtracting the central bank’s foreign currency holdings from its foreign assets, one can get an idea of the bank’s Eurobond holdings, or debt in foreign currencies, which came to a further $1.9 billion, bringing the total to $11.57 billion by the first quarter of 2011.

The governor’s office of the central bank did not respond to requests to disclose the total holdings of the bank’s public debt.

Another method used by economists is to assume that the “securities portfolio” of the central bank is comprised of only Lebanese debt, which would mean they hold $10.3 billion of public dues.  “The whole way it is managed is ridiculous,” said Chaaban. “We are selling ourselves. The banks are over exposed so the central bank buys T-Bills from their own portfolio but where does the money come from? From the [commercial] banks’ 15 percent required deposits! You are buying from yourself and giving from one pocket to the other.”

Subsidies — popular but pricey

Compounding the debt problem has been the recent debacle over gasoline prices, which hit a historic high of 37,300 lira ($24.74) last month for one jerrycan (20 liters) of gasoline, even after a tax cut that will cost an estimated 1 percent of GDP, according to the IMF.

Last month the finance minister announced that a “temporary solution” was found one day before public transport workers were planning a major nationwide strike over the price of gasoline. The agreement between the finance ministry and the drivers is set to cost the government a further $15 million each month, for which it will take out another loan to finance the subsidy.

Proposals to cap the price at a level more acceptable to all consumers were deemed too expensive by the finance ministry, something many economists and consumer rights groups dispute.

“In all cases it is having an effect on the fiscal revenue, so at least do something tangible. Now you are not winning on any side,” said Ghobril, adding that even though this would eventually increase the amount of public debt, that was somewhat “more long term.”

“If revenues are going to fall at least let the citizens benefit,” he said.

Inflation picks up steam

Realistically, there are no short-term solutions to the debt or the deficit, but these are not what impacts their day-to-day lives. Headed in the opposite direction of GDP figures, inflation rates are expected to rise from 4.8 percent last year to 6.5 percent this year, according to the finance ministry.

Even this may be an underestimate as the figures which go into determining the Consumer Price Index, the CAS’ major indicator of inflation, only go back to December 2007, meaning that it does not cover price fluctuations of even one full economic cycle. Then there is the difference between what people feel in terms of rising prices and what the actual overall inflation rate is.

“An index [shows] an average, which is not necessarily indicative,” said Chaaban.

Still, the CPI published by the private Consultation and Research Institute showed an increase in March alone of 1.33 percent, and increased 1.95 percent in the first quarter of the year, well on pace to surpass the 6.5 percent full-year estimate.

According to most estimates, some 70 percent of the price increases come from import inflation — the increase in the price of imported goods. What’s more, during the first three months of the year the trade deficit increased 8 percent to $3.6 billion, due to a drop in exports of 7 percent and a rise in imports of 4 percent to total $4.5 billion.

The bill for “mineral fuels and oil” was 8 percent higher due to an average oil price of $105 per barrel during the first quarter compared to $76 per barrel last year. Trying to bring the price of oil down internationally is impossible for Lebanon but what is possible is to address the cartel that imports oil into the country.

“If you are a retailer and the material price is increasing you cannot really reflect this change to the consumer unless you are a monopolist. That’s why the [price of] gasoline has been rising because there is a cartel of importers,” said Chaaban. “We call this asymmetric price transmission because if the prices of imports rise you throw it out on the consumer, but if prices fall you don’t necessarily do so because your margin decreases.” But dismantling the oil-importing cartel will be complicated, as political heavyweights own the energy companies that operate the port and distribution, according to Iskandar.

Another option to decrease real inflation would be to de-peg the lira from the dollar and re-peg to a basket of currencies in line with the composition of imports, instead of the current practice where the central bank buys and sells US dollars in the market to keep the currency steady.

“Because the central bank has so much in reserves they don’t want to change the model now because no one feels the heat to do so,” explained Chaaban.

During the first quarter, some 30 percent of imports came from countries using the Euro, 8 percent from China and only 12 percent from the United States. The exchange rate between the dollar and the euro also remained relatively high. “When the price of the euro goes up 40 percent and we import 30 percent of goods in that currency then the cost of business goes up 12 percent,” said Iskandar.

Instead of governance

So with the first quarter of 2011 summoning the horsemen of the apocalypse to ride down on Lebanon’s economy, how have the policymakers reacted? Well, last month Lebanon’s caretaker Finance Minister Raya Hassan, a member of the March 14 camp, made a comment that shook confidence in the country even further, saying that her ministry may be unable to pay public sector salaries due to the refusal of Telecom Minister Charbel Nahas, from the March 8 coalition, to transfer the remaining telecom revenues in his ministry’s account at the central bank to the treasury’s account.

In the past, revenues from the telecom sector — one of the few cash cows of Lebanon’s public sector — were transferred every month, providing the finance ministry with a steady cash flow to make payments to its two top expenditure items: the local banks who hold the majority of the public debt and public sector salaries.

Consumer price index

Now, under the pretext that the money will be squandered and that the amount is in dollars, not lira, the telecom minister decided that he will not transfer the money to the treasury, which the finance ministry controls, citing the legal principle that a part of the money from cell phone revenues must go to the ‘Independent Municipal Fund’ to be distributed to different municipalities according to the amount of telephone calls made from their respective jurisdictions.

In any case, only the finance ministry can distribute these funds, so the money looks like it will be staying put until perhaps another finance minister closer to March 8 is in place. (In the first quarter transfers to municipalities decreased from $5 million to $4.5 million.)

The telecom revenues issue has highlighted the long-stated but yet unabated problem of not having a single account for the government at the central bank, which allows each ministry to work independently of central finances. This also creates a situation where municipalities rarely get the dues they are owed and public finances are left exposed to political debacles. So when Hassan said that if the situation continues the government would not be able to pay public sector salaries or retirement dues, panic ensued.

“The statement by the minister of finance was very unwarranted and inaccurate. This is absolute hogwash,” said Iskandar, a generally pro-March 14 economist. “Most of the public policy is political instead of being tied to objectives that serve the economy at large.”

Eventually, the central bank governor said he would pay the salaries and the finance minister clarified that the scenario would not come to pass.

“The central bank is not going to pay [the salaries] but [Governor Riad Salameh] said it to reassure people,” added Ghobril. “It would be the equivalent of the government defaulting.”

Nonetheless, this does not take away from the fact that, on paper at least, the economic downturn is hitting public finances hard.

According to the IIF’s Iradian, if the telecom revenues were transferred to the treasury then the deficit in 2010 would have fallen from 7.5 percent to 5.5 percent. In any case “from an accounting perspective [the money] is not lost,” said Chaaban.

Securing growth

Even while the deficit increases and public debt mounts, there are some alternatives to dealing with the debt while at the same time implementing key infrastructure projects in areas such as water, electricity, roads and telecommunications, to create a framework for economic growth.

On average Lebanon spent only 2 percent of its GDP on government investment between 2003 and 2009, a figure well below many other countries in the region, including Syria, which spent 10.1 percent during the same period, according to the IIF.

For starters long-awaited public-private partnership (PPP) projects could be implemented, but only after a law is passed in parliament, which requires the formation of a government.

That law will have to be good enough to define the risks and obligations of both the public and private sectors. Even then it might not be enough. “In the current political climate no one is going to be believe a PPP law or any other law,” said Ghobril.

Supposing enough confidence is built after a government is in place, banks will also have to be interested, and perhaps incentivized, to finance such schemes for them to work. But since banks in Lebanon are usually more interested in short term profits to stay safe, the idea has not rubbed off well on everyone.

“I don’t think it’s a function of the banks to really take part of those PPPs; it’s not our business,” said Azhari “Since our sources of funding are short-term deposits, we should really fund the working capital, because those types of project are usually very long-term lending and this is not a function for a commercial bank.”

But as the banking sector’s deposit-to-loan ratios have grown to rates that place them well out of the range of most reasonable risks, there are some in the industry who may take the plunge of dealing with the government directly.

“We are risk takers, our duty is to buy risk; this is what we do [as] bankers,” said Audi’s Baz in relation to PPP projects. “Provided those projects are economically viable we don’t have a negative position — but don’t ask us, please, to finance non-viable projects which you know as a government are not viable because you want us to do political lending.”

Another option is to securitize public infrastructure projects, which would also develop the currently minute capital markets in the country. A securitization law already exists for this purpose so in theory the process is already one step ahead of PPP. However, even the law itself is not clear according to Chaaban, who noted that there was still uncertainty regarding the policy on reselling such securities, and issues relating to timeframes have yet to be ironed out.

The need for government to govern

It is evident that if confidence is to return to Lebanon’s economy, reforms implemented or mitigation measures exercised, then a cabinet will need to be formed. As Executive went to print, the country had been four months without a government and still the different political parties appeared no closer to a resolution over how to divide the cabinet posts.

“It is time to do so many things different but this country, with its sectarian administrative structure and facilities, is not destined to be a modern country,” said Iskandar. “It can be a place where people dance, play musical events, a university destination or maybe even technological nation one day; but as a society, it cannot be an advanced one.”

First published on the cover of Executive Magazine’s June 2011 issue

Since the end of the civil war, Lebanon has developed a relationship between its economy and banking sector that resembles an old beat-up truck carrying a heavy load on a road to nowhere. The banks keep the truck (in this case the economy) running with the money they pump into the gas tank. In return, the driver (the government) agrees to take on a heavier load of debt as he drives the economy aimlessly toward a destination of which even he is not really sure. Whenever the truck slows down everyone gets worried that it has finally given out and the price of gas to keep it going will be too high for the driver to pay. When that happens the mechanic, in this case the central bank, comes along and makes an arrangement with the government and with the banks so that the fuel can be afforded. So far the arrangement has kept the truck running. But the further the truck travels, the more beaten-up it becomes, and the less it delivers to its owner, the people.

“The system is not creating jobs,” says Jad Chaaban, acting president of the Lebanese Economics Association (LEA) and assistant professor of economics at the American University of Beirut, in relating the banking sector’s contribution to GDP. “Its creating consumption but this is not sustainable because there are no jobs and the incomes to finance it. It’s just creating a debt cycle.”

An economy of consumers

At the end of the first quarter, Lebanon’s commercial banks held $30.9 billion in loans to the private sector and $28.2 billion in loans to the government, according to Banque du Liban, Lebanon’s central bank.

Since gross domestic product is comprised of several components, it can be calculated either by looking at expenditure (the sum of consumption, investment, government spending and net trade) or various income approaches. But because Lebanon’s lack of accurate or timely GDP statistics on many of the elements needed to compute output using the income approach is useless as a basis for analysis. The only way to make an assessment of how banks contribute to the economy is to consider how the money they pour into the country affects the elements of the national accounts — the numbers that come together to make up national output or GDP — using the expenditure approach.

Lebanon calculates national output by adding consumption, gross fixed capital and changes in inventory (in other words gross net investment), and exports, then subtracts imports from that figure. Looking at the last available national accounts from 2009, consumption accounts for $32.45 billion, equal to 92 percent of total GDP at nominal prices that year. Gross net investment, by comparison, totaled $11.98 billion, equivalent to just 34 percent of nominal GDP.

Effectively, that means Lebanon’s economy is heavily dependent on how much it can consume.

Consumption requires income, which comes primarily from wages, as well as remittances, which came in at $8.2 billion last year, according to the World Bank.

Official employment figures are scant and widely believed to be inaccurate; figures on wages are pretty much non-existent, but one does need a job to have a wage. In this regard the banks do not contribute as much as is popularly thought; the Association of Banks in Lebanon puts the number of employees in the banking sector at 27,268 in 2009, the latest figure available. Total wages and allowances during that year came to $732 million, or just 2 percent of nominal GDP during the year.  Indirectly, however the banks’ private sector loan portfolio supports different sectors that spur some consumption and investment.

“We play a major role. Lending for the economy is like blood for life,” says Freddie Baz, chief financial officer and group strategy director at Bank Audi.

The latest available figures from the central bank for how loans are split up in the financial sector date to the end of 2010 and were released in May; total loans to the private sector from the financial sector were $38.7 billion, up from $31.56 billion a year earlier. Of that figure, 77.68 percent of the total number of borrowers had taken out individual loans.

The LEA’s Chaaban explains that the predisposition toward consumption is a matter of a glass being “half full or empty” — Lebanon needs consumer spending to spur confidence but at the same time the banks have become “almost partners in setting up fiscal policy,” and have an interest in seeing consumption in the economy maintained. According to Baz and other bankers Executive has spoken with, loans go to the economy according to its structure. At present, the economy is not just heavily tilted toward consumption but also consumption of imports as well as goods and services produced by specific sectors.

You are what you fund

Economies are defined by their primary, secondary or tertiary activities. Primary activities are those that produce raw materials and basic foods whereas secondary materials use the former to produce finished products. These first two activities are commonly agreed to be characteristics of classical productive sectors. Tertiary activities are those associated with the services sector and in developed economies account for the overwhelming majority of jobs.

According to the 2009 national account, the proportion of loans given to what economists label as “productive sectors” is scant at best. Agriculture and livestock made up 4.8 percent of output ($1.7 billion at nominal prices) that year, constituting a 6.9 percent real contraction, while industry made up only 6.4 percent of output ($2.6 billion at nominal prices), also falling 4.2 percent in real terms. The only secondary productive sector that saw an increase in output was construction, making up 13 percent of output ($4.7 billion at nominal prices) constituting a real expansion of value-added by 10 percent.

Assuming that the economy is relatively similar a year later, the first discrepancy with regard to the allocation of loans to sectors according to their output is obviously the loans to the government to finance the public debt, which currently stands at more than 130 percent of GDP. Government expenditure constituted 9 percent of output in 2009 ($3.16 billion at nominal prices), an expansion of 8.5 percent on the year previous.

More is not spent on much-needed public services and infrastructure for several reasons, including the government’s inability to pass a budget for the past six years, the large fiscal burden for civil service employee salaries, and predominately because the government has to pay its interest on the public debt, which is majority-held by the same local banks that dole out the loans.

One also notices that loans to construction constitute 16 percent of total credits to the economy ($6.3 billion), which is roughly the same as output. If one considers all the elements of the real estate industry together (construction, real estate rents and housing loans) the figure rises to 35 percent of total loans ($13.6 billion). This, however, could be an oversimplification of the sectoral risk the real estate sector poses — especially given the recent decline in retail prices — because a housing loan is backed by a real asset, requires a significant down payment by the buyer and the amount of refinancing on retail property is ostensibly nothing compared to that seen in US when the housing crisis triggered the global financial crisis in 2008.

“The process of building is development but the process of selling is different,” says Marwan Iskandar, economist and chairman of Banque de Crédit National.

Even so, walk by any construction site in Lebanon and one will notice that the majority of workers are not Lebanese. Stroll into any real estate broker’s office, however, and the opposite is true. Since most construction workers are paid off the books and breakdown figures for real estate jobs are not published, it is difficult to gauge how many jobs are being created for locals and what the net income effect on the economy is for the sector that can go to construction.

The only indicator is the national accounts, which showed the output of the construction services sector to be some $398 million at nominal prices in 2009, below 10 percent of nominal construction output for that year. Ergo, the net effect on job creation, and thus local wages and the economy, is presumably much less than in a country that employs local labor in that sector.

Those who are quick to accuse the banking sector of not creating jobs often point to their contribution to the tertiary sector. “Does a large farm produce as much as two expert doctors?” responds Iskandar rhetorically to the idea. “Jobs, maybe more so. But if you are concerned about the national income you have to weigh these things. Is it really a good thing to employ many people who produce a little, or a few people who produce a lot and then allow you to invest because their savings go into facilitates? This is debatable.”

Make up the breakdown

But even so, here the loan breakdown formula propounded by banks doesn’t make much sense: total contribution of market services and trade at nominal prices in 2009 was $20.6 billion constituting 59 percent of the total. If transport and communications are added to this figure it becomes $23.3 billion or 66 percent of the economy. Loans to “trade and services” at the end of 2010 came to almost $14 billion, or 36 percent of the total. Adding financial intermediation and “others” — which includes health, social work, defense, public administration and regional organizations — that figure increases to just 48 percent.

The difference between the bankers’ formula relating to loans and output can be explained by the loans that go to individuals. In total at the end of last year $9.1 billion went to individual loans (including housing loans at $4.5 billion) making up some 24 percent of the total. This allows for further consumption that is not predicated on actual labor and output. “The banks also give interest on deposits, mostly to consumers, which also inflates the GDP,” says Chaaban.

How productive that money is for the economy also depends on how it is spent. “If you buy cars and homes then, yes, you are contributing. But if one takes out a personal loan just to have a good time then not really,” says Nassib Ghobril, head of economic research and analysis at Byblos Bank.

What is certain, however, is that the loan portfolio of banks is heavily skewed toward consumption. This inherently creates a problem for output because when import prices rise — as is the case presently because of rising commodity prices — GDP suffers as people’s ability to consume decreases but their dues to the banks stay the same.

Moving away from such a model will require concerted public policy and regulation to steer the economy toward a model that can produce locally and shield the economy from external shocks.

“Today in Lebanon, increasing the job component of growth can only be possible by shifting our growth model from internal demand as a major driver to external demand,” says Baz. “If the Lebanese economy is a tertiary activities economy and a services industry economy, it is not up to us to make miracles and shift it overnight to a manufacturing economy… It’s like a tanker — when you want to change the direction it takes time.”

How long it will take, if that is even the intention of Lebanon’s so-called economic policy makers, is as unclear as the still non-existent government’s policy of job creation. In the meantime, the banks will likely continue to contribute to the economy in the same way they have since the end of the civil war. As for the Lebanese, it also seems they will have to wait and see if the system is maintained or, perhaps at their own accord, it eventually crumbles.

“You don’t decide if it’s sustainable and neither do I,” says Baz. “History will always tell if it is sustainable or not.”

First published in Executive Magazine’s June 2011 issue

When people are preoccupied with your own business they hardly give much thought to those that have left for greener and more lucrative pastures. Governments on the other hand have a responsibility that extends to all their citizens, both inside and outside the country.  So with Lebanon attempting and failing to form a cabinet for months, it seems evident that the government has shirked its responsibility to it citizens abroad who left because of such behavior in the first place.

In late March alarm bells should have started going off in the halls of government after the Lebanese embassy in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast, announced that it began to receive messages from “invisible commandos,” warning the Lebanese not to interfere in the country’s political affairs. In fact, the government was already aware of the problem having sent a message to Lebanese expats living in the country over 4 months previous to the announcement telling them to “at least send the women and children,” according the to a government source close to the proceedings who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. “But because 4 months passed without major incidents they sent them back.”

On April fools day, the Lebanese ambassador Ali al-Ajami attended the “swearing in” ceremony of Laurent Gbagbo, the controversial Ivory Coast president who refused to step down after he was defeated in an election by the internationally recognized Alassane Ouattara, now president of the country. Tensions in Ivory Coast had been running high since December 2 when Ouattara was declared president after a second round of voting was completed.

At the time, the Lebanese government was unapologetic about having attended the ceremony as Caretaker Foreign Minister Ali Shami stated that there was “no mistake,” and that the ceremony was “within protocol” in an interview with Hezbollah’s Manar TV on April 2. According the to the government source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, the protocol was apparently to attend the mock swearing in ceremony and sent a letter to Ouattara stating that the gesture was purely to “protect the interests of the Lebanese” and not an affront to Ouattara. It does not seem to have worked.

Almost immediately reports emerged that pro-Ouattara forces were targeting the Lebanese in Abidjian putting those interests into serious question. “All of a sudden things flared up quickly and we could not respond fast enough,” said the source who disputed widespread claims that Lebanese were being targeted mentioning that the only incident was a man who had been shot in the neck by a “stray bullet.”

“In principle there are no problems [with Ouattara], quite the opposite, he was understanding and welcomed the idea and they are insisting on the presence of the Lebanese,” he said. “There are over 80,000 Lebanese in the Ivory Coast, they are a pillar of the economy there, so it is not in the interest of anybody that they be harmed.”

Lebanon to date has no national policy for evacuating its citizens in such emergencies. In principle, a request for evacuation needs to be sent to the cabinet by the foreign ministry where it is voted on and action is taken. Of course, when the situation became an emergency, there was no cabinet to make a decision. As a result, a series of ad hoc measures were taken to attempt to bandage up the situation.

“You are in a country where municipalities don’t pick up their garbage and there is no electricity so how do you expect them to have an evacuation policy or proper international relations,” said Hilal Khashan, professor of political studies at the American University of Beirut

Thus instead of going to a cabinet which refuses to sit in the same room together to solve the evertday problems of the Lebanese, the request for an evacuation was sent to the Higher Council for Defense (HCD)—a council for national defense that can be called upon by the president or one third of its members and made up of the president, the prime minister, and ministers of defense, foreign affairs, finance, economics and trade, transport, and the commander of the army. The HCD met for the first time on April 5 while the Lebanese in Abidjain were still holed up in their homes trying to avoid the violence and many without power and water for days as violence flarred between pro-Gbagbo and pro-Ouattara forces.

In the meantime an operations room was requested to be setup in the airport of Abidjan by the Ambassador by Minister Shami, but it was apparently put to little use. “Even though Abidjan airport has not been shut down, flights to Beirut are impossible because the airport road is unsafe as snipers are spread across nearby buildings and they are targeting passing cars,” Ambassador Ajami said to the Al-Mustaqbal newspaper owned by the caretaker prime minister on April 3.

According to the government source, the HCD eventually sent a delegation first to Accra, Ghana, to setup a logistics “headquarters,” to evacuate the Lebanese expats in Ivory Coast. There the delegation ran into even more problems as French forces controlling the airport and pounding pro-Gbagbo locations across the city made it “very complicated,” to get permission to land in Abidjan. After they had received permission they ran into even more problems related to the lack of a national evacuation policy when they found that planes that had arranged to be sent by the national carrier Middle East Airlines (MEA) would not have insurance cover. Planes were then chartered and the insurance issue eventually resolved. The first plane touched down in Abidjian on April 9, over a week after the intense fighting in the Ivory Coast had begun. Gbabbo was captured by pro-Ouattara and French forces on April 11, meaning official relief from Lebanon only lasted two whole days.

Even during this post-conflict period the different regional and local influences on the lack of a cohesive Lebanese evacuation policy were evident as Iranian airplanes began to fly out evacuees along with MEA who announced on April 14 that 7,401 Lebanese expatriates since the start of the conflict on board a total of 17 flights. A total of 3,172 passengers had to pay for their own flights and with the rest being covered by the “Lebanese government,” which also owns the airline; thus in essence it will need to pay itself back at some point.

“MEA is not a private company, it is owned by tax payers,” quipped Nasib Ghobril, head of economic research and analysis at Byblos bank. MEA also stated that it would operate two flights a day from Abidjan airport to bring back the remaining Lebanese evacuees.

“You cannot talk about an electoral law to allow expat to vote and go through all of those arguments and not protect them when they are abroad,” said Karim Makdisi, associate director of the Issam Fares institute for Public Policy, a Beirut-based policy think tank. “There should be a policy and there is no coherent policy.”

The government source said that as a result of the debacle a request has been sent to the defunct cabinet requesting that a national plan for evacuations be devised and a special allocated budget be allocated to fund such activities. “There were money issues during the rental and approval of planes,” they said without elaborating. “The Lebanese government is going to have to pay for it.”

As Executive went to press, Lebanese expats from Ivory Coast were still arriving from Ivory Coast. But they were not the only ones. On March 19 Hezbollah’s Iran-backed secretary general Hassan Nasrallah made a speech voicing his support for the mainly Shiite Bahriani opposition and criticizing the Saudi-lead troops for entering the country to help. By the end of the month the Bahraini interior minister was accusing the protestors of being liked to Hezbollah. “We cannot remain silent as concerns accusations about training (regime opponents),” the party said in a statement. “The accusations are aimed at undermining the peaceful demonstrations of the oppressed people.”

By early April Lebanese expats, most of which were reportedly of the Shitte faith, were being sent back from the Gulf Cooperation Council in as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates which had also sent troops to help the security forces of Bahrain’s embattled Sunni king.

“The Bahraini government is scared as is the GCC who believe that there is an Iranian conspiracy against them whether their fears are genuine or not,” said Khashan. “Hassan Nasrallah is a rational calculator and he doesn’t want the Lebanese to be harmed but perhaps it was a slip of the tongue. ”

Lebanese politics naturally came into play once again as the current Saudi-backed Caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri criticized Nasrallah for his statements and threw his political weight behind Bahrain’s decisions to suppress the pro-democracy protests and allow foreign troops to enter its territory as a sovereign state.

“Before anything else, (Lebanese expatriates) respect the laws of host states and they do not interfere into these states’ domestic affairs under any circumstance,” Hariri told Bahrian’s King Khalifah over the phone according to a statement issue by his media office.

“This is a structural indication that foreign policy is not based on a national understanding or political culture of protecting citizens,” says Makdisi. “If you are a state that is unwilling or unable to protect its people and then uses citizens abroad for political purposes then all this discourse of national entities and democratization is non-sensical. The proof is in the pudding.

As a result of both the ongoing crises in the GCC and Ivory Coast coupled with uprisings in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere have peaked fears that repatriation to Lebanon will swell of citizens coming back to the country. That has led many to fear that there will be extra demand on the already inadequate number of jobs in the country. Jad Chaaban, acting president of the Lebanese Economics Association believes that technically it will take a year to ascertain if this happens and puts the maximum number of people coming back at some 100,000.

“I am very worried about it and we are taking measures,” said Neamat Frem, president of the Association of Lebanese Industrialists and of Indevco, one of Lebanon’s largest industrial employers. “We stopped hiring to make space for returnees,” he says in reference to his company’s operations in Egypt. “This is why we have to work very hard to help them stay where they are. Keeping expatriates’ jobs abroad must be part of our foreign policy and decision-making process. It is a big factor of our economy.”

Officially the unemployment rate stands at 9.2 percent. However, that rate is from 2007 and is based on an International Labor Organization standard which means if someone has worked a regular job for more than one hour a week they are assumed to be employed. Moreover, the country’s last comprehensive labor survey was conducted in 1970, meaning current statistics are based on household survey’s and not a census which is the international standard. Byblos’s Ghobril adds that many companies do not tell the government how many employees they have to avoid paying taxes and social security on them further skewing the figure. “It’s a political decision,” said Chaaban in relation to the official methodology for calculating unemployment in order to lower it.

“I don’t know how they calculate these figures, they do not reflect the reality of the market,” said economist and advisor to the Parliamentary Budget Committee Ghazi Wazni who and puts the figure at around 15 percent with youth unemployment at around 25 percent.

Because the Lebanese economy relies heavily on remittances which made up a total of 22.4 percent of GDP last year according to the World Bank (including compensation of employees from abroad.) If this figure begins to fall the country could see the various effects of the repatriation crisis hitting this essential element of the economy could be hit hard. “Assuming that things do not stabilize and this is long term process, the Lebanese will lose their income, and the remittance swill not be sent back home or be substantially reduced.” says Chaaban.

The ramifications of that happening are far from certain as there is little consensus on where this money is going and if it will have a large effect on job creation. Wazni says that most remittances go to deposits in the banking sector and real estate so there decrease would have much effect on the economy anyhow. The former accounts for around only 20,000 jobs in the country and the latter is not a productive sector nor does it create many jobs in construction because most workers in the industry are foreign laborers from neighboring Syria. Chaaban on the other hand, says that most remittances go to consumption, a direct contributor to GDP. So if remittances fall, and consumption goes down, so does GDP, not to mention the domino effects that will have. “A big part of the remittance funds schooling and I expect that more people will join the public schools,” he said. “The same thing happened after the July war. A lot of people lost their businesses and had to send their children to public schools.”

As for jobs, there is little hope that Lebanon’s economy can produce anymore in the near future. According to a study conducted by the European Commission last year, 15,000 jobs need to be created every year to absorb new market entrants. Wazni belives that figure lies even higher between 30,000 and 35,000 jobs. “The problem is government policy; the question of employment is not a priority for the government,” he says. In addition to the lack of a national evacuation policy the country also does not have a national labor policy.

What makes matters even worse is, despite the fact that recent growth has been more or less “jobless” according to statements made by Lebanon’s finance minister, the age of relying on that growth to make official figures like Debt-to-GDP look better or create some knock-on effects in the job market looks like it is coming to a close. According to statistics released last month by the International Monetary Fund, Lebanon’s estimated GDP growth predicted to drop from 7.5 percent last year to 2.5 percent this year with inflation trending upwards at 6.5 percent for the year.

“When there was political instability [in Lebanon] there was an economic boom across the region and world which Lebanon benefitted from,” said Ghobril in reference to the period before the global economic downturn. “Political stability in Lebanon, economic instability elsewhere meant an increase in Lebanese investment [during the crisis]. This is the first time these two factors converging together,” he says implying that Lebanese economy will be caught in the middle.

That already seems to be happening just as the tourism season picks up with numbers already down in the first quarter. Room yields at hotels are have plunged some 50 percent in the first two months of 2011, according to Ernst and Young indicating that high-end tourists are not looking to Lebanon this year. Airport passengers and tourist numbers were also trending downwards in the first quarter.

“The entire region has been written off by Western tourists, the top spenders are going elsewhere, they have options,” said Ghobril. “Lebanese expatriates are big spenders in Lebanon. But, will they spend that much this year?” he questions pessimistically.

That could be given that some of them are already here. But whether they will stay is quite another issue. All of the experts interviewed by Executive predicted that most expatriates from the Ivory Coast will return and by the end of April the flow of those being booted out of the GCC had stemmed significantly. Moreover, even if there is increased competition from high-paying jobs in the Gulf and

“The Lebanese go to conflicting areas because job opportunities are available there, it is worth is and once you’re mobile, you stay mobile. You’re not used to living among your family anymore as a middle aged professional and if you hear a Kalashnikov you are not scared, where as a Frenchman immediately runs away,” said Chaaban.

At the time of this writing the assets of Lebanese in the Ivory Coast had not been liquidated, which was one of the principal concerns of several economists Executive spoke to. Neither had a government been formed that could have taken decisions to try and gain from many of the returning and qualified expats. And the reforms that could have provided an alternative market to countries experiencing unrest such as efficient telecommunications and electricity had yet to be implemented.

So when Lebanon’s citizens who have come for an unexpected visit leave again, it seems that those who stay behind will do so having missed another golden opportunity to change their lives and their economy. Perhaps then they may realize that their current economic and political course is untenable and change tact, or they may just make another trip to the airport just like all those who have come, and gone, before them.

For the most part, a drive out of Beirut down Lebanon’s southern coastal highway offers a scenic respite from the city; to the right lies the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean and to the left the mountains of the Chouf. But the natural beauty becomes marred when another mountain emerges to block the seascape. It is the gargantuan massif of garbage just outside the southern city of Saida that has been growing for some 40 years, due to the lack of solid waste planning and program implementation by the government.

“It was a mountain, now its two mountains and there is no place to have a third one,” said Mohamad Seoudi,  head of Saida’s municipality, which is charged with managing Lebanon’s most infamous waste disposal site. “The dump yard is overloaded. It was always overloaded. We have had to deal with this dump yard for over 40 years and the situation is now critical.”

Last month a crisis erupted in the areas around Saida when Seoudi refused to accept the garbage from the city’s surrounding municipalities. He said the reason was that they were not willing to allocate 40 percent of the money they receive from the Independent Municipal Fund to pay for separation and solid waste treatment.

This same process occurs in Beirut, where the money goes to the private waste management company Averda. This arrangement is far from cost effective, however. According to Seoudi the price of processing one metric ton of garbage comes to $170 in the capital when you include sweeping costs; by comparison, the upper estimate of the average cost of waste treatment in Germany ranges between $81 and $91 per metric ton, according to a report published by the European Commission.

Garbage began to pile up on the streets of Saida at levels reminiscent of civil war days, when the lack of functional government left garbage uncollected around the country.

“Nobody pays [for] anything,” said Seoudi “This is the difficulty, you tell them to come and share the burden and let the government manage the plant, and to deduct 40 percent from their budgets, and they don’t accept because they are used to paying nothing.”

What adds to the incredulity of the issue is that a solution is already present. Just next to the dump, a solid waste treatment plant sits idle. The plant belongs to the Lebanese-owned, Saudi funded IBC company, according to Seoudi. He said that an agreement was signed with the company to process the waste as far back as 2003 with operations slated to begin in 2005, yet nothing happened due to a dispute over pricing.

“We asked Prime Minister Hariri to deal with the issue and with the owners and they have to negotiate,” he said, adding that discussions are ongoing between the company and members of the ministries of interior and environment.

The tip of the trash mound

The Saida dump seems to be only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Lebanon’s environment issues. The new Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) study on Lebanon currently being compiled by the World Bank sheds light on many of the environmental problems Lebanon faces and will continue to face if action is not taken. The study seeks to identify the difference  between the cost of mitigation and the current level of government financing to recommend policies to improve the country’s environmental standing.

As ever in Lebanon, timely figures are few and far between. But extrapolating the latest figures available (from 2005)  — which set the annual cost of environmental degradation in Lebanon at 3.7 percent of gross domestic product — into a context of today’s economy , poor environmental practices could be costing the country some $1.48 billion per year.

Proportionally, this figure is actually a decrease on the last estimate taken in 2000 when the figure was put at 3.9 percent of GDP, with the fall attributed to the one piece of major environmental policy passed by a post-war government targeting pollution. Before 2002, anyone driving down from the mountains above Beirut could hardly make out the empty Burj Al Murr tower through the thick layer of smog. Thankfully, that is no more the case, after a 2002 decision to ban diesel engines in cars.

Not surprisingly, the CEA document predicts Lebanon will most likely not achieve United Nations Millennium Development Goal Seven, which aims to “ensure environmental sustainability,” mostly due to a lack of adequate reform in reforestation, solid waste and wastewater management. The problem of solid waste was highlighted as a “major environmental problem with more than 700 open dumps used by the municipalities and where some of the waste is still burned.”

The lack of proper solid waste management also weighs down Lebanon’s poor ranking on the World Bank’s 2010 Environment Performance Index. The index ranked the country 90th of 163 countries in the world, according to the CEA study, with a noted rapid decrease in environmental sustainability since 2008.

May Jurdi, director of the department of environmental health at the American University of Beirut, said that in addition to the disease-ridden cockroaches and rodents that come with these open dumps, there are also long-term health risks associated with the lack of action. “When it rains all the garbage goes into the groundwater and into the rivers,” she said.

But getting an accurate reading of the problem and how it affects the population is difficult.

In order to assess how much the issue is affecting public health, real monitoring figures are needed, and these currently don’t exist. Jurdi said the health ministry has collected some data, but it is far from sufficient.

“The problem is that there are no clear indicators,” she said. “In countries like ours [the government is] afraid of indicators. We are a country of conspiracy theories and doubts. Everything is a conspiracy because we don’t have trust.”

Already citizens consider water from the taps undrinkable. Groundwater is the most commonly used source of water in Lebanon because of the widespread prevalence of wells in the country, and the lack of dams. The Ministry of Energy and Water estimates that the total number of private wells exceeds 42,000, compared to the 620 officially sanctioned and government-owned wells. Private wells’ total yield is estimated at around  440 million cubic meters per year while the government wells draw only 260 million cubic meters.

However, due to the fact that most of these wells are illegal, ministry officials admit that the number could be as high as twice the official estimate. As a result, no one really knows how much of the water being consumed by the people is safe or how much is contaminated by garbage.

Wasting water

Probably the most work that has been done in the past decade toward protecting the environment has been in the wastewater sector. At present 11 wastewater treatment plants operate in the country, with six others constructed but not yet connected to a network, according to the CEA study [See page 100]. When the existing facilities are all online, the country will have the capacity to treat 400 million cubic meters a year (CM/yr). At present, only 46.5 million CM/yr are being treated, according to the study.

Furthermore there is dispute over what constitutes a treatment plant and also what is being achieved. “Ghadir is not a plant because it does not have secondary treatment, Saida is a pumping station and at Baalbek, 20 percent is reaching the plant because people are stealing the wastewater for irrigation,” said Jurdi.

That practice is causing widespread public health risks, which at present are not being measured. For starters, when wastewater is used to irrigate plants, carcinogenic trace metals accumulate in the soil; change in the soil’s PH levels can cause them to enter the plants and thus be ingested by humans.

Moreover, spraying fruit and vegetables with wastewater allows fecal material to accumulate on the products, which eventually hit the market, not to mention the parasites, bacteria and viruses that are attracted to such material.

Manfred Scheu, principal advisor at the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), said that the development of the wastewater sector over the past decade is “remarkable,” given that just to find a place for a treatment plant in Europe takes around a decade. “If you are not a dictatorship [that] can expropriate land without worrying about people then this takes time. Its absolutely normal,” he said, adding that by 2020 most of the wastewater discharged in Lebanon should reach a treatable level.

Paying for it

Paying for everything will be a monumental task. At present, just covering operations and maintenance (O&M) in the wastewater sector will require an estimated 50 percent increase in the lump sum tariff that consumers pay, according to Scheu. “That is only O&M. That is not going to cover your investment. But in Lebanon it’s much cheaper, in Europe you have to double [the tariff],” he said.

So far no government official has been willing to stick his or her neck out and propose such an increase on a highly sensitive political issue of this kind.

“People are unhappy if VAT is increased but they don’t want to pay directly for services,” said Fadi Doumani, an environmental analyst and World Bank consultant who worked on the CEA report.

Last month Gebran Bassil, caretaker minister of energy and water,  declined to comment on any increase in the tariff structure associated with building new water infrastructure. When pressed by Executive on whether the plan was to borrow the money needed for water infrastructure, such as dams, he responded that the debt is already mounting due to the subsidies to the regional water establishments.

“Today the treasury is broke, the institutions are broke and the people are broke,” he said. Since Lebanon’s only law protecting the environment was passed nine years ago, no government has issued the implementation decrees needed to put it into effect. The law covers many areas of environmental protection, including mandatory environmental impact assessments for approval of projects that would affect the environment and the formation of a National Environmental Council to protect Lebanon’s natural sustainability. Other laws also call for the environment ministry to house environmental police to implement the law. However, there is currently little legal means or active framework to mitigate the effect of environmentally harmful developments. The environment has “remained a secondary priority characterized by an uncompleted legal and institutional framework as well as by ineffective policies to address the challenges and political constraints to deliver reforms,” states the World Bank report.

Still, even if the Lebanese government does not implement the reforms needed to protect the environment, it is unlikely to affect their ability to attract funding, as World Bank funding has continued despite the lack of substantive reform measures by any post-war government.

First published in Executive Magazine’s May 2011 issue

Text by Sami Halabi

Implementation Rana Khawand