It took Lebanon’s descent into the abyss to bring its political leaders back to the negotiating table. After the divisions of the political-financial oligarchy over the amount of losses in the financial sector derailed discussions with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the summer of 2020, these were finally able to resume. Monday, January 24, the Lebanese delegation began talks with the financial institution, in virtual mode – Covid-19 obliges – on an economic and financial rescue plan for the country of Cedar, condition for obtaining a loan.
“It is an obligatory road to resolve the crisis which has become multidimensional. Everyone is convinced that there is no alternative,” assures the Deputy Prime Minister, Saadé Chami, a technocrat from the IMF and placed at the head of the Lebanese delegation in September 2021. The government of Najib Mikati hopes to reach an agreement with the institution before the legislative elections, scheduled for May , to obtain a loan of at least 4 billion dollars (3.5 billion euros), as well as the release of the 11 billion dollars of aid promised at the Cedre conference organized in Paris, in April 2018.
“The return of confidence and a fresh contribution in foreign currency of 12 billion to 15 billion dollars can allow the economy to return to growth”, believes Riad Salamé, the governor of the Banque du Liban (BDL), who despite the investigations opened against him in Lebanon and in Europe, for embezzlement and money laundering, is a party to the negotiations. After opposing – with the Association of Banks and Party Leaders – the plan drawn up in April 2020 by the government of Hassan Diab, and which the IMF had endorsed, he assures us that today he is on the same wavelength as the government. “We were not against an agreement with the IMF, it was our right to negotiate the figures”, he justifies.
Safety plan
It is however the estimate of the Diab plan of 68 billion dollars of losses, accumulated between the BDL and the banks, that the Mikati government and the BDL finally recorded in December, allowing the opening of the negotiations. “They bought time for everyone to arrange their affairs on the backs of the population, deplores Alain Bifani, a former director general of the Ministry of Finance who participated in the development of the Diab plan. It is the people who assume these losses and are now devastated by the loss of their purchasing power and their bank deposits. »
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