Lebanon‘s President Michel Aoun has expressed that he is striving to form a government to encourage Lebanese expats to open businesses in Lebanon.
“Lebanese expats can help their homeland by establishing institutions in it and contributing to the development of sectors to create job opportunities,” he said.
This comment came during a meeting with the World Lebanese Cultural Union in Baabda Palace on Tuesday.
He also said that the new government could help facilitate talks with financial institutions that desire to help the country. However, there is no new government still since August of last year and no indication that he and the PM-designate Saad Hariri are apt to agree on it any time soon.
Meanwhile, the Lira has hit a new low against the dollar with the exchange rate touching 10,000 LBP, causing intense protests to break out across the country.
Inviting the expats to open businesses in a country shaking at his core, with the officials disregarding its expanding crises, and unable to agree on urgent matters, sounds like a call in the wilderness.
There must certainly be things that could be done from now to help the country before pinning the responsibility on Lebanese expats to resuscitate it and its economy.
Lebanon is in urgent need of a rapid rescue government, the responsibility of which falls primarily at this stage, if not solely, on the president himself and Saad Hariri.
Without a fully-functional rescue government and indications of some potential stability, Lebanese expats opening businesses would be barely bandaids prone to fall out.
Moreover, according to some tweets by Lebanese businessmen in the diaspora, they are still waiting for the state’s approval to business projects they had proposed a while back to save Lebanon from its collapse.
