🔶 International Monetary Fund: Lebanon needs more banking reforms.
The International Monetary Fund announced on Friday, November 13 that Lebanon must take additional steps to reach an agreement on the restoration of its banking system. This agreement is one of the prerequisites for receiving billions of dollars in international financial aid.
According to AFP, the International Monetary Fund announced after the end of the negotiations with the authorities in Lebanon that progress has been made in examining the plans to reform the banking system, the financial regulations and the regrouping of deposits, but no agreement has yet been reached on an effective and sustainable strategy for the rehabilitation of the banks.
One of the main obstacles is the adoption of a law that will determine how to share the losses caused by the financial crisis in Lebanon. The government submitted a draft of this law to parliament in 2025, but the opposition of banks and political parties prevented the vote on it. In 2022, the Lebanese government projected the losses caused by the 2019 financial crisis to be around $70 billion; A figure that has apparently increased over the past few years.
The Minister of Finance of Lebanon, Yassin Jaber, expressed hope that the agreement on the cooperation program with the International Monetary Fund will be signed in the first quarter of 2027 or by the end of that year at the latest.
Lebanon's economic crisis, which the World Bank considers one of the world's worst economic crises since 1850, limited depositors' access to their bank assets, destroyed public trust in banks and increased the country's economy's dependence on cash transactions.