The explosions in the port of Beirut add to a serious economic crisis that has been going through Lebanon for months. All economic indicators are red and the country is bogged down in mismanagement. To obtain international aid, economic reforms are necessary. "It is difficult but it is not impossible", assures on Europe 1 the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Charbel Wehbé. 

INTERVIEW

A chaotic situation in an already fragile country. Less than two days after the explosions in the port of Beirut, the situation remains chaotic in the Lebanese capital. Dozens of people are still missing after the violent blasts and rescuers are continuing their search in the rubble, hoping to find survivors. The tragedy comes on top of a serious economic crisis the country has suffered for months, already worsened by the coronavirus epidemic and the confinement of the population. Reconstruction promises to be "difficult but not impossible", according to the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

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Reforms to be carried out urgently

Currency depreciation, hyperinflation, massive layoffs, drastic banking restrictions: all indicators are red. "Lebanon has suffered for some months from a deficit, exceptional in our history, of state finances, due to a lot of damage and mismanagement on the part of our financial officials", confides the Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Charbel Wehbe. 

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Almost half of the population (45%) lives below the poverty line, with 22% of the Lebanese in a state of "absolute poverty". The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has offered aid worth billions of dollars in aid, but which remains blocked because negotiations with the banking lobby, which owns a large part of the public debt, are slipping. "We appealed to France and they responded very positively. The only condition requested, very cordially, is to start the reforms", explains the minister. 

More "transparency", less "corruption"

"We are supposed and obliged to make our reforms with our own with our own decisions", continues Charbel Wehbé. "It is difficult but it is not impossible, for a country which has always been managed like this, in a somewhat light way. The time has come to measure things and to make the right decisions: transparency, not to follow. corruption and always be up to the standards everyone has to meet. " The minister is aware of the difficult reconstruction that awaits the country. 

For months, discontent has been mounting in Lebanon and the explosions, caused by a stock of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, stored "without precautionary measures" in the port of Beirut, have not calmed tensions. The political class is held responsible for the state of the country and the disaster. On Europe 1, Antoine Basbous, political scientist and founder of the Observatory of Arab Countries (OPA) sees in this tragedy "the culmination of an abandonment of national sovereignty in favor of a messianic police under the orders of a foreign power who controlled everything ".