Lebanese Government Approves an Economic Reform Plan

  • Beirut, Lebanon
  • 1 May 2020
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The Lebanese government unanimously approved a plan for economic reform, which includes addressing the public debt problem and restructuring the banking sector. The plan shows a gap in the financial sector with a value of $63 billion, and suggests steps to bridge it, including replacing some of the money of depositors in banks with shares, recovering the exaggerated interest that some depositors and banks obtained in previous years and recovering the stolen money in corruption operations.

The plan revealed that some Lebanese government creditors refuse to negotiate with it if Lebanon does not enter into a financing program with the International Monetary Fund. After adopting the economic rescue plan, the Lebanese government hopes to persuade the international community on its basis to help Lebanon out of the cycle of financial collapse, which was aggravated by strict preventive measures to confront the Covid-19 epidemic.

The government’s plan includes in its main clauses necessary reforms and restructuring of public debt. The international community is calling on the government for "rapid and effective" reforms as a condition for providing any financial assistance to the small country, which has been exhausted by years of successive political crises and corruption.

Source (Al-Arabiya.net website, Edited)