World Bank Urges Lebanese Officials to ‘Get Their Act Together’

A vehicle blocks a road during a protest against the fall in Lebanese pound currency and mounting economic hardships in Khaldeh, Lebanon March 8, 2021. (Reuters)
A vehicle blocks a road during a protest against the fall in Lebanese pound currency and mounting economic hardships in Khaldeh, Lebanon March 8, 2021. (Reuters)
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World Bank Urges Lebanese Officials to ‘Get Their Act Together’

A vehicle blocks a road during a protest against the fall in Lebanese pound currency and mounting economic hardships in Khaldeh, Lebanon March 8, 2021. (Reuters)
A vehicle blocks a road during a protest against the fall in Lebanese pound currency and mounting economic hardships in Khaldeh, Lebanon March 8, 2021. (Reuters)

Lebanon must be willing to implement some real changes in order to get international funding assistance, according to the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa vice president.

“Lebanon needs to help itself, so that we can help it,” said Ferid Belhaj in an interview with Bloomberg on Friday. “Unfortunately, as of right now, Lebanon has not been interested, willing or able to help itself.”

Aid talks with the International Monetary Fund have stagnated after disputes with commercial lenders and the central bank, the country’s largest debt holders. The Lebanese government resigned in the aftermath of a massive explosion in Beirut last August, and has been running the country in a caretaker capacity as efforts to form a new administration have stalled.

The annual inflation rate reached a record high and food prices soared by around 400% in December, highlighting the dramatic impact on consumers and businesses of the country’s worst financial crisis in decades.

“It is a tragedy,” Belhaj said. “What we are trying to do in Lebanon is go around the government systems and try to help the people directly, through unconditional cash transfers because when you look at Lebanon today, we are getting to close to 50% poverty.”

Last month, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri said the likelihood of forming a new government is looking more attainable and that there was an opportunity for a breakthrough, but there has been little hope to rectify the path of an economy that’s been battered by a raft of measures to control a spike of coronavirus cases.

For the international lender, this is “a call for all Lebanese decision makers to really get their act together, from the central bank governor, to the president to the prime minister and everybody in between,” Belhaj said. As of right now, “I don’t see any glimmer of hope.”



German Central Bank Chief: US Tariffs Would Eat Up German Growth in 2025

President of the Bundesbank, Dr Joachim Nagel, speaks during an interview at the G20 finance meeting in Durban, South Africa, on July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Rogan Ward
President of the Bundesbank, Dr Joachim Nagel, speaks during an interview at the G20 finance meeting in Durban, South Africa, on July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Rogan Ward
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German Central Bank Chief: US Tariffs Would Eat Up German Growth in 2025

President of the Bundesbank, Dr Joachim Nagel, speaks during an interview at the G20 finance meeting in Durban, South Africa, on July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Rogan Ward
President of the Bundesbank, Dr Joachim Nagel, speaks during an interview at the G20 finance meeting in Durban, South Africa, on July 17, 2025. REUTERS/Rogan Ward

The Bundebank expects growth of 0.7% in Germany in 2026 but this could be eaten up if US tariffs of 30% threatened by President Donald Trump were implemented, the central bank's President Joachim Nagel told Reuters in an interview.

“If tariffs materialize in August, a recession in Germany in 2025 cannot be ruled out,” Nagel said in Durban, South Africa, where the meeting of G20 finance chiefs is taking place on Thursday and Friday.

The 30% tariff on European goods threatened by Trump would, if implemented, be a game-changer for Europe, wiping out whole chunks of transatlantic commerce and forcing a rethink of its export-led economic model.

“The outlook for the German economy has just improved, especially due to the fiscal program that has been announced and is now being implemented by the German federal government, which also sets the right accents: investments in infrastructure, in future technologies,” Nagel said. “But this uncertainty could significantly weaken a positive outlook.”

Also, German Finance Minister Klingbeil told Reuters on Thursday that the European Union should find solutions to its finances without using common borrowing.

Klingbeil said the EU had joint debt in the last few years, but that was in a crisis situation during the COVID pandemic, he said in an interview on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in Durban, South Africa.

“Overall, we need to resolve the finances of the EU differently than through a policy of joint debt,” he said.

“Fortunately, we are not in such a crisis right now,” he added.