The World Bank revealed that the value of remittances to Lebanon increased by 1.8 per cent in 2018 to reach $7.2 billion, bringing Lebanon to the top of the region in calculating the ratio of remittances to GDP by 12.7 per cent.
According to the World Bank, the average cost of sending money from high-income OECD countries to Lebanon remains very high.
The semi-stable Lebanese remittances represent an average of more than $7 billion, one of the important sources of hard money entering the country, in light of the shrinking of tourism revenues, which used to account for about 20 percent of the country's GDP.
The cumulative deficit in the balance of payments, which rose in the previous months to about and amounted to $2 billion in the first quarter of this year, is one of the most difficult problems in the public finances along with the budget deficit, which exceeded the threshold of $6.5 billion last year, accounting 11.5 per cent of the GDP, according to estimates based on the completed financial results.
Source: (Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Edited)
