Most Lebanese said to live in poverty
By Elie Hourani -Daily Star staff
Monday, July 19, 2004
BEIRUT: More than 90 percent of Lebanese are now living below the poverty line, according to Elie Yashoui, the dean of NDU's faculty of business administration.
Yashoui, who was speaking Saturday during an economic forum, said that Lebanese expatriates were playing a crucial role to prevent the collapse of the Lebanese economy.
"Without Lebanese expatriates, the majority of Lebanese would have reached starvation level," he told an audience which included Business Administration students and several politicians. One of them was Minister of State Abdel-Rahim Mrad.
That's why giving priority to domestic investments "while trying to attract foreign investments through a new economic policy" is crucial, he said.
Moreover, Yashoui called for raising the minimum wage, which is now at $200 per month, to at least $600 - which is the minimum amount needed for a person to stay above the poverty line, he claimed.
Eighty-five percent of savings in Lebanon are raised by 20 percent of the population, he said.
He also said that 1000 out of every 25,000 importers accounted for about 90 percent of the country's total imports.
"This means 10 percent of the Lebanese were living in total economic bliss while the remaining 90 percent of the Lebanese had horrible economic problems," Yashoui said. He referred to the issue of swapping short-term national loans with longer term ones as "little more than prolonging the debt problem."
Yashoui also called for adopting a policy that offers high interest rates and promotes little foreign borrowing.
He expressed concern about the state reaching a near bankruptcy stage, prompting it to lay its hands on $10 billion, which was the amount deposited by private banks as compulsory reserves in the Central Bank.
He said the state should focus its efforts on three main economic objectives: collecting taxes, creating development projects and observing balanced development.