Barring a presidential election, Hezbollah runs the show – and the show is ripping poor Lebanon apart
Lebanon ’s economy was in dire shape even before the Israel - Hezbollah war. Not having a functioning government makes it worseSmoke billows from building rubble at the site of overnight Israel i air strikes in Beirut's southern suburbs, on Oct. 4.Even today, with Israel i warplanes flattening big chunks of south Beirut and southern Lebanon , and Israel i ground forces fighting Hezbollah inside Lebanon , there is some semblance of normal life in the capital.
In 2020, the pandemic and the ammonium nitrate explosion in the Port of Beirut – which killed about 220 people and left 300,000 homeless – finished the economic demolition job. Lebanon that year defaulted on its Eurobonds, which now trade at pennies on the dollar. The International Monetary Fund says the economy shrank 40 per cent between 2019 and 2022, inflation reached triple digits and the banking industry collapsed.
According to economists at Bank Audi, the country’s top bank, most of the numbers are going in the wrong direction again. Tourism, which normally represents some 20 per cent of GDP, has vanished, and investment is going into reverse. The investment-to-GDP ratio is now less than 10 per cent; in a good year, it is 20 per cent or so. The country is headed into a fairly deep recession, with predictions for a full-year fall of as much as 2.5 per cent.
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