- 29
- May
- 2025
The International Monetary Fund wants to lend $3 billion to Lebanon. On paper, it’s an "opportunity" to get a devastated country back on its feet. In reality, it’s a cruel joke.
Lebanon is staring into an $85 billion abyss - a gaping hole dug by decades of mismanagement, clientelism, and public governance as cynical as it is incompetent. In the face of this disaster, the IMF is offering spare change and an eraser.
But the most shocking part isn’t the amount. It’s the philosophy behind it.
The IMF - an institution notorious for imposing severe austerity, gutting public services, cutting subsidies, pensions, education, and healthcare - has taken an unprecedented turn: it is now effectively exonerating the Lebanese state. The very same state that engineered the collapse is being cast, absurdly, as a passive victim of circumstances.
The state’s massive debts—owed to both the central bank and commercial banks—are conveniently rebranded as “financial sector losses.” A sleight of hand that shifts both blame and burden onto depositors and the financial system.
Meanwhile, parts of the government aren’t even trying to meaningfully reform or restructure the state. No—their obsession is to scrape together a few billion more, always from the same pockets: banks and citizens.
One day we’re told that all interest earned on dollar deposits since 2015 should be canceled. The next, that savers who converted Lebanese pounds into dollars after 2019 shouldn’t qualify for reimbursement. Seriously?
Then come the borrowers who repaid their loans at the official exchange rate of 1,500 LBP to the dollar—now being targeted for retroactive penalties, as though following the law at the time was somehow criminal.
Every day brings a new injustice, another display of amateurism, another absurdity. Yet those truly responsible are never held to account. There’s never a word about cutting runaway public spending—look at the black hole that is the electricity sector. Never a fair tax reform.
Instead, ordinary citizens’ pockets are literally emptied, while those of the deep state remain untouched. And this isn’t new. For over three years, This Is Beirut has been sounding the alarm: if the IMF’s prescriptions are applied as-is, they will destroy Lebanon’s financial system.
They do nothing to reform the state, nor address the root of the crisis. Instead, they sacrifice the private sector—banks, businesses, depositors. In other words, the people still holding the country together.
The IMF wants to wipe the slate clean by scapegoating the banks, rather than restructuring the state, fighting corruption, reforming public administration, or implementing fairer taxation.
Meanwhile, the real culprit - the state - walks away unscathed. No binding audit. No asset recovery. No confiscation of illicit wealth. The people are asked to sacrifice their savings, but the political elite are never asked to account for anything.
Where lies the justice in all that?
And yet, there is another way—recently voiced by Morgan Ortagus, US Special Envoy to Lebanon. In her words, Lebanon could do without the IMF if it regained even a minimal degree of political credibility and security stability. That alone could attract tens of billions in investment, particularly from Gulf countries.
In short: if Hezbollah gave up its weapons, Lebanon would enter a new dimension.
That’s the core of the issue.
Lebanon does not need a symbolic, conditional $3 billion loan that buries accountability and liquidates depositors’ rights. What Lebanon needs are political reforms, restored sovereignty, and institutional credibility—to attract real and lasting investment flows.
The money is out there. The willingness is there. Arab Gulf countries, Europe, even parts of Asia are ready to bet on Lebanon - if only it were governable again.
So why sell off our future for a toxic handout? Why validate a plan that absolves the state and destroys its citizens? Why cling to the IMF when a far broader opportunity could exist, if we only cleaned house politically and secured the nation?
Refusing the IMF is not populism. It is but realism.
It is a refusal to move forward while the guilty walk free and the victims foot the bill. It is a refusal to trade national dignity for a loan that is both humiliating and pointless.
Yes, Lebanon can do without the IMF - but only if it finds the courage it has been missing for too long.
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