Highlights from the interview of the Head of the Association of Banks in Lebanon Salim Sfeir with Alrai newspaper

The Head of the Association of Banks in Lebanon Salim Sfeir talked to Alrai newspapers about his clear position on the crisis:

- The incompetent consultants’ recommendations caused intractable and more painful crises for the banking sector, while the country’s leaders are still struggling to disregard their personal interests, their parties’ interest and their power-sharing agreement.

- Our partners in the Gulf understand the exceptional circumstances that the financial sector is witnessing, and have the urge to respond to the recovery’s requirements. Therefore, it is the duty of the government and the banking sector to initiate a dialogue with our partners in the Gulf, and to take great care of their rights and assets as a custody. We are also looking into the possibility of sending a delegation from the private sector to Gulf countries to be able to reassure them.

- The state proceeded with its bidding game among its centralized constitutional institutions and with its decision to default on debts payment. Which kind of leadership would slaughter its banking sector and boast about the verge of its bankruptcy while the Central Bank’s treasury had been satiated with more than 30 billion dollars?

- Declaring bankruptcy would have been the final coup de grâce hadn’t the foreign lenders waited for the promised negotiations to agree on a funding support program with the IMF in order to respond, and hadn’t not been for the preventive measures implemented by the Central Bank and the banking system, especially at the level of capital control, albeit the law wasn’t enacted.

- The state finds spending and deep distortions easy: 13 billion dollar have been spent on fruitless subsidies, knowing that the big part of the money went to smugglers and traders taking advantage of the crisis. The obligatory reserves that represent exclusive rights for banks and their depositors were also in danger of deduction by 14% of a total of 105 billion dollars of savings owned by more than 1.5 million investment accounts.

- It is such a shame to throw banks under the bus, knowing that the banking sector opposed the government’s plan to deduct from the deposits, and stood against the decision of defaulting on debt payments, which exacerbated the collapse.

- Banks were under great pressure and victims of defamation campaigns. However, the current economic war will not eliminate the Lebanese legacy and treasure that banks represent through their local and foreign investors and the deposits of resident and non-resident Lebanese.

- The delay accumulates the recovery cost by the day. Lebanon is not bankrupt, it is ransacked. Lebanon is not a failed state; its management is failed.

- Despite all the difficulties and pressures, the banking sector is still in a favorable position to recover and regain momentum. All over the world, the state is the guardian of the citizens and the economy.

Communication & PR Department