World Bank urges Lebanon to ‘help itself so we can help it’

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By Abeer Abu Omar Bloomberg -- Lebanon must be willing to implement some real changes in order to get international funding assistance, according to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa vice president. “Lebanon needs to help itself, so that we can help it,” said Ferid Belhaj in an interview with Bloomberg on Friday. “Unfortunately, as of right now, Lebanon has not been interested, willing or able to help itself.” Aid talks with the International Monetary Fund have stagnated after disputes with commercial lenders and the central bank, the country’s largest debt holders. The Lebanese government resigned in the aftermath of a massive explosion in Beirut last August, and has been running the country in a caretaker capacity as efforts to form a new administration have stalled.

The annual inflation rate reached a record high and food prices soared by around 400% in December, highlighting the dramatic impact on consumers and businesses of the country’s worst financial crisis in decades. “It is a tragedy,” Belhaj said. “What we are trying to do in Lebanon is go around the government systems and try to help the people directly, through unconditional cash transfers because when you look at Lebanon today, we are getting to close to 50% poverty.” Last month, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said the likelihood of forming a new government is looking more attainable and that there was an opportunity for a breakthrough, but there has been little hope to rectify the path of an economy that’s been battered by a raft of measures to control a spike of coronavirus cases. For the international lender, this is “a call for all Lebanese decision makers to really get their act together, from the central bank governor, to the president to the prime minister and everybody in between,” Belhaj said. As of right now, “I don’t see any glimmer of hope.”

Beirut’s famous cafes drained by dollar crisis, stifled by pandemic

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by NAJIA HOUSSARI -- arabnews.com -- BEIRUT: Beirut’s famous sidewalk cafes are facing an uncertain future amid the coronavirus pandemic and dollar exchange rate instability, with employees and owners warning that “the price of a cup of coffee cannot keep pace with the exchange rate.” The recent lockdown, which lasted for two months and 22 days, meant further problems for the capital’s cafes, the place of choice for many Lebanese to relax, wind down and socialize. Many have closed amid the country’s economic turmoil, while several were destroyed in the port explosion last year, and have since been left abandoned. Lebanon’s health measures to stop the spread of coronavirus mean that people are banned from sitting with each other to smoke, sip coffee, chat about affairs or discuss the country’s future. Ali Farhat, 35, an investor in a sidewalk cafe in the Azaria building in downtown Beirut, remembers the “good old times in the area before the protests and the accompanying riots started in late 2019 and the days before the collapse of the Lebanese pound and coronavirus.”

He added: “The area was bustling. The cafe was a place for entertainment, hanging out with people, winding down for half an hour during workdays and having a snack. Everyone back then could afford to sit in a coffee shop. “Today, downtown Beirut is deserted, the employees moved to work from their homes, and my work has become limited to selling cigarettes, coffee and tea to passersby and the security forces guarding downtown Beirut. “The worst financial crisis has caused the prices to soar. As the dollar exchange rose, I stopped selling my goods and closed the store, because the next day, I had to buy goods at a higher price.”

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Lebanon's top Christian His Beatitude Cardinal Patriarch Rai criticizes Hezbollah in leaked video

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BEIRUT (Reuters) -Lebanon’s top Christian cleric has made unusually direct comments criticizing the Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, accusing it of harming the country by dragging it into regional conflicts. “I want to tell them...You want us to stay in a state of war that you decide? Are you asking us before you go to war?” Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai said in a leaked video circulated by local media on Thursday, in which he mentioned the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. “You’re not looking out for (our) interests, nor the interests of your people,” he said, apparently addressing Hezbollah, a heavily-armed movement allied to its backer Tehran in regional wars. Rai said he had received visits from Hezbollah supporters who were privately critical of the group as they felt the force of Lebanon’s financial collapse. “We get people from Hezbollah. They come to us to tell us: ‘this arsenal is against us, we can no longer endure’. Because they are also hungry like us,” he said.

The video marked his strongest criticism yet of Hezbollah, which along with its political allies holds sway in Lebanon’s parliament. The patriarch wields influence in Lebanon as head of the Maronite church, from which the president must be drawn under a sectarian power-sharing system. Rai has called for Lebanon to remain neutral in regional conflicts, referring to Hezbollah’s deployment of fighters to neighbouring Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad alongside Shi’ite militias, as well as its alliance with Iran in a power struggle with Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah’s opponents say its relationship with Tehran has kept away Gulf Arab states that once funnelled money into Lebanon, closing off an important source of aid. Lebanon’s financial meltdown has crashed the currency, fueling poverty and hunger, its worst crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war that fractured the country along sectarian lines. Reporting by Laila Bassam and Ellen Francis; Editing by Catherine Evans, William Maclean

Lebanese politician criticises 'death' of demarcation talks with Israel

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by middleeastmonitor.com -- Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has asked why the UN-sponsored talks between Lebanon and Israel on maritime border demarcation around potentially oil- and gas-rich areas have stopped. Jumblatt heads the Progressive Socialist Party of Lebanon. He wrote on Twitter that he was surprised by "the death of demarcation" after Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri has been working on the negotiations for ten years, and had succeeded in providing a glimmer of hope for the Lebanese economy. The first round of indirect talks on maritime border demarcation between Lebanon and Israel kicked off on 14 October last year, with US mediation and UN sponsorship. The talks aimed to resolve disagreements that hindered exploration for oil and gas in the area off the Lebanese and Israeli coasts.

Will Lebanese banks crash Middle East finances?

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by dw.com -- Lebanon has been known as "the Switzerland of the Middle East" for decades because of its strict banking secrecy laws. But as the country falls ever deeper into economic crisis and debt, the banks that once drew so much foreign capital to the country are also in trouble. Local economists estimate that altogether, Lebanese banks owe over $90 billion (€77 billion), and say that since late 2019, they have severely restricted withdrawals and foreign transfers, especially in US dollars. There have been many stories about the financial damage done to ordinary Lebanese by these moves as their currency goes into free fall. The Lebanese pound has lost over 85% of its value against the US dollar on the black market. But could potentially insolvent Lebanese banks also spark a dangerous, regional domino effect, causing the same sort of problems for the Middle East as an indebted Greece did for the European Union during the 2008 financial crisis? Billions lost

Late last year, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad blamed his country's ongoing economic woes on the fact that anywhere between $20 billion and $42 billion belonging to Syrian depositors was trapped in Lebanon. Syrian businesspeople have long used Lebanese banks to avoid international sanctions and other restrictions. Earlier in 2020, research by a Yemeni think tank, the Sanaa Center For Strategic Studies, suggested that as much as 20% of Yemen's foreign currency reserves, estimated at around $240 million, were stuck in Lebanese banks. And in the semi-autonomous northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan, politicians claimed that up to $1 billion of money from oil sales was trapped with Lebanon's Bankmed. Lebanese men withdraw money from a Bankmed ATM in the capital, Beirut

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Resigning from parliament will expose Hezbollah’s grip on Lebanon

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By Hanin Ghaddar -- english.alarabiya.net -- Put simply, Lebanon is an Iranian colony. As protest slogans indicate, the Lebanese people are finally aware of this reality. The presence and ineffective statements of the former pro-West March 14 political parties means the international community needs clarity about who really controls the country. Only then can policy be drawn accordingly. For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app. The March 14 leaders always justify their inactions by using the fear factor – that if they resign, Hezbollah will take over the state institutions, and they want to make sure they can protect what small margin of independence they have left in Lebanon. Another argument is that they want to prevent the chaos that will happen if state institutions fall completely.

This logic is outdated. Chaos has arrived, and the state – as in the decision of war, government formation, or economy – is in the hands of the Iranian regime and its proxy. The Beirut Port blast and the assassination of Lokman Slim are two examples of how inadequate the state institutions’ roles have become. Without clarity, the international community will continue to try to find an economic solution, to handle Lebanon as a humanitarian crisis. This is dangerous because it hides the real problem, which is political, not financial. If former March 14 leaders get their parliamentary blocs and ministers to resign, the political core of the crisis will be exposed. This could lead to a new and more urgent policy for Lebanon – one that addresses Iran’s hegemony and how to counter it, instead of focusing on humanitarian assistance. A meeting between Lebanese President Michel Aoun and PM-designate Saad Hariri last week ended poorly. Failing to reach a much anticipated breakthrough for the formation of a government the theatrical exchange of accusations was a clear indicator that any new government in Lebanon is some way off.

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