Director-General of the Lebanese Ministry of Finance Alain Biffany resigned from his position as a member of the negotiating team with the International Monetary Fund, noting that "private interests undermine the government's plan for economic recovery."
With this, Alain Biffany, who has been director of the Ministry of Finance for 20 years, becomes the second member of the Lebanon team in the IMF talks to resign this month.
Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund had indicated that she could not yet anticipate significant progress in negotiations with Lebanon to help solve the crisis. Biffany's resignation highlights the obstacles facing the talks, which Lebanon started last May and aims to help in facing a financial crisis that is considered the greatest threat to Lebanon’s stability since the civil war that took place between 1975 and 1990.
The government bailout draft is a pillar of talks with the International Monetary Fund, and it paints a massive $61 billion in losses in the financial system, according to Biffany, but negotiations have stalled due to the dispute between the government and the central bank over the size of the losses and how to distribute them.
Biffany stressed in a press conference that "a criminal campaign threatens to frustrate the plan," considering that "the dispute is wasting time and Lebanon is losing credibility, while increasing the diminishing foreign exchange reserves."
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Edited)
