It has been a year since Lebanon signed the staff-level agreement. It has yet to meet seven requests set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Lebanon was supposed to fulfill in exchange for signing an entire agreement and receiving financial aid of $3 billion.
The first request, the amendment of bank secrecy provisions, was first introduced in May 2020. However, it took over two years for the law to be passed, and even then, it needed to be deemed adequate by the IMF, which rejected it and returned it to the President of the Republic to revise on August 1, 2022. The parliament studied the amendments from August to October 18, 2022, and finally passed a modified law after nearly three months. Ultimately, it was still inadequate and did not meet the IMF's requirements.
In addition, the budget for 2022 was delayed for months and was rejected by the IMF. As for the 2023 budget, it was only approved in April, and its fate is still unknown.
The second request, the forensic audit of the banking sector, has yet to be carried out. The fate of a proposal to create a budget for the Banque du Liban (BDL) and foreign reserves, which was supposed to be submitted in May 2022, has yet to be presented and remains to be determined.
Moreover, the capital control law proposal has not been approved by the committees responsible for it.
The restructuring of the banks is still a debate between the government and the Association of Banks, and its fate is unknown.
Despite the dire financial situation in the country, the restructuring of the public sector has not been addressed by the government, which is instead focused on increasing salaries for public sector employees, including more than 7,000 employees who were hired illegally in 2018 for political reasons.
Lebanon's failure to meet the IMF's demands is a cause for concern, as it puts the country's financial stability at risk. The future of the IMF agreement seems uncertain, and Lebanon is relying on a dwindling supply of hope.