IMF Middle East director: Lebanon’s leaders must regain public trust

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00:00I want to ask you about Lebanon, as I said I would at the beginning.

00:03Some major efforts underway in Lebanon with a new government.

00:07The country seems to have really turned the page on quite a lot of its past complicated chapters, shall we say.

00:14Are you confident that the country is going to return now to a period of economic stability

00:19and that that in turn is going to lead to a period of economic growth?

00:22Lebanon is, as you rightly said, emerging from a deep crisis, a crisis of finance,

00:31a crisis due to the impact of the war, but also a crisis of confidence.

00:37Therefore, it's very important for Lebanon and the Lebanese authorities to regain confidence,

00:41confidence of their citizens by addressing those deeply rooted problems that have been delayed for years now,

00:51which means that you need to address the issue of the debt, the issue of the financial sector,

00:57the issue of the deposits, bring inflation down because it's a big tax on low-income people,

01:04and also to have a roadmap on how to recover the Lebanese economy.

01:10This requires a certain number of important reforms, but also the assistance and the support to allow Lebanon to address those.

01:19Lebanon also needs to recover from the war, reconstruct, and this would require massive aid from partner countries.