Four years into crisis, Lebanon's leaders hope tourism boom will help bypass reforms in IMF bailout

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Lebanon's political elites are pushing a recovery plan for the country's financial collapse that would allow them to sidestep tough reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund

BEIRUT — Four years into its historic economic meltdown, Lebanon’s political elites, masters at survival, are pushing for a recovery that would sidestep tough reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

Economic experts and former officials involved in designing Lebanon’s original IMF-approved recovery plan in 2020 say the political leadership and associates in the banking sector are deliberately implementing a “shadow plan” to torpedo the deal and place the burden of bailing out the financial system on ordinary Lebanese who are already impoverished by the crisis.

Carrying out the IMF reforms, which include audits of Lebanon’s long secretive central bank and other banks, would not just force the elites to bear much of the cost of repairing the financial meltdown. It would also threaten the networks of corruption, patronage and waste that allowed them to milk the system for years, experts say.

“I would have never thought that these people, despite the size of the catastrophe, would still act with so much cold blood and irresponsibility,” said Alain Bifani, a former Finance Ministry director general and an architect of the recovery plan, speaking to The Associated Press about the elite’s refusal to implement it.

A growing number of politicians are now betting that a rebounding tourism sector, remittances from Lebanese abroad, and a fledgling natural gas industry will revive the economy without reforms requiring major sacrifices from them.

The financial meltdown has widely been blamed on the political leadership that has held power