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This report updates a 1999 privatisation study to reflect the financial collapse of 2019, the 2020 port explosion and the 2024 conflict. It argues that privatisation can no longer be treated as a revenue exercise for a manageable deficit. It must instead be assessed alongside banking resolution, sovereign debt restructuring, reconstruction, IMF conditionality and social protection, in an economy whose GDP has contracted by roughly 40%, where public debt stands at about 164–177% of GDP and around 80% of the population lives in poverty.
The paper concludes that Lebanon currently shows most of the warning signs of failed privatisation: crisis valuations, absent regulators, weak procurement, a dormant stock exchange, an insolvent banking system and FATF grey-listing. It reviews the banking sector's proposal to place state enterprises in a sovereign fund and argues that the proposal treats them as collateral rather than as operating entities in need of reform.
Sector chapters cover electricity, telecoms, water, the national carrier, ports, the casino and tobacco monopolies, and public land. Each sets out a reform-first sequence. The report gives lenders, investors and donors a framework for judging when private participation would create value rather than transfer it.
Key findings
- The report finds that governance, accounting and performance reforms without ownership change often achieve 70–80% of potential efficiency gains.
- Its 2026–2030 road map excludes major asset sales in 2026–2027, limits 2027–2029 to greenfield PPPs and management contracts, and allows selective privatisation from 2029 only if eight conditions are met.
- Water establishments, transmission and distribution networks and public land are placed on a do-not-privatise list, with long-term leases recommended where land revenue is needed.
- Electricité du Liban, supplying about four hours a day with technical losses near 40% and cumulative losses above US$40 billion, would be unbundled before any private generation is introduced.
- Any future sale would require at least three independent valuations on normalised earnings, floor prices, earn-outs, parliamentary approval and published bids and contracts.
- Safeguards against elite capture include a five-year bar on politically exposed persons, concentration and cross-sector ownership limits, and 5–10% employee share allocations.
Summary of the paper; the full analysis is in the PDF.