Towards a Sustainable Recovery for Lebanon’s Economy

Ricardo Hausmann, Ugo Panizza, Carmen Reinhart, Douglas Barrios, Clement Brenot, Jesus Enrique Daboin Pacheco, Clemens Graf von Luckner, Frank Muci and Lucila Venturi

No 21222, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Lebanon’s current economic crisis ranks among the worst in recent history. GDP has collapsed by 38% in real terms. The Lebanese lira, which was fixed to the dollar in 1997, has lost more than 98% of its value on the parallel market. The government has defaulted on its debt, and depositors are unable to access their funds held at commercial banks. Consolidated public sector debt, including both government debt and commercial banks’ claims on the Banque du Liban (BdL), represents more than seven times the current GDP. Public services delivery has crumbled. In short, the country is undergoing a debt crisis, a banking crisis, a currency crisis, and a growth collapse. Four years into the crisis, a resolution remains elusive, and each passing day increases the economic and social burdens faced by the population. Given the increasing cost of delaying a resolution, we propose a strategy for Lebanon’s economic recovery that addresses all the dimensions of the crisis while recognizing the need to rapidly kick-start the economic recovery.

Date: 2026-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21222 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21222

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21222

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().