Most politicians in Lebanon are proud that the uniqueness of the cedar country is the only one without economic planning. Some even went further, to the fact that it does not need economic management, reaching the extent that a few dared to demand the abolition of the state in its simplest economic sense.
This trend was born independently and was deepened by the defeat of the Shihabi project in the economic and administrative aspect (although what remains of it are the remains of the foundations of the state) and distorted the recommendations of the IRFD mission, saying that the market is organized by itself. This trend has been revived, and its pillars have deepened. Beyond Taif, through the rejection of planning once again, to the rejection of economic priorities to date.
There is no economic, financial or tax administration based on a clear and specific program whose legitimacy and its implications derive from a general economic vision of the reality of the country and its future. That was the situation, and so it continued.
If the evidence of this is more than counted, however, the most notable are perhaps two evidences:
1) the characteristic of the national economy, both internally and externally agreed, with systemic and structural imbalances.
2) How a country can live without a budget for more than a decade, if budgets were not limited to disbursement mechanisms or to secure resources without minimum management.
Between the textbook of the economy and the real reality of the Lebanese economy there is a great distance measured in light years, perhaps. Since all the classic rules have been indicative of the need for the explosion for many years or at least face an economic situation that does not allow progress, work or even breathing, while the reality is that the economy continues to throb. Today, imbalances are evident, as are the resources of force that make it possible to emerge from the crisis, but the greatest lack is the will and the administration and the vision before them.
The crisis is delicate and uncomfortable, the whole political class has today made a minimum of categorical interests of a total contradiction with the limit necessary to provide two conditions of will and management, which makes any attempt to move or reform, is an escape towards the front, and a greater deepening of the imbalance.
Once again the opportunity today is available internally and externally, to compose what we lost a quarter of a century ago.
