DUBAI (Reuters) – Lebanon’s economic depression “is orchestrated by the country’s elite” and is now threatening its “long-term stability and social peace”, the World Bank said on Tuesday in a press release accompanying the publication. of its latest report on the economic situation in Lebanon.
Once considered a rich and liberal nation in the Middle East, before the civil war of 1975-1990, Lebanon has been plunged since 2015 into a deep political and economic crisis.
“The deliberate depression is orchestrated by the country’s elite who have long taken control of the state and live off its economic rents”, it is written, while the World Bank describes the Lebanese economic crisis as the one of the worst recorded in the world since the middle of the 19th century.
This grip “persists despite the severity of the crisis – one of the ten, if not the three most important economic collapses in the world since the 1850s. It comes to threaten the long-term stability and social peace of the country “.
In its statement, the World Bank points out that Lebanese public revenues fell by almost half last year, to 6.6% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). This is, she says, the third lowest percentage in the world, behind Somalia and Yemen.
(Report Tom Perry; French version Jean Terzian)
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