A Predominant Banking and Financial Sector - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2019

A Predominant Banking and Financial Sector

Résumé

Service-related activities compose 70% of Lebanon’s GDP. Old and renowned, the banking and financial activities yet only accounted for 8% of the GDP (4.4 billion US dollars) in 2013, i.e. less than half of the amount of trade activities and less than the industrial production. In early 2015, they included 70 banking establishments (including 16 merchant ones), 10 representative offices of foreign banks, 53 financial establishments, 324 currency exchange offices and 40 credit institutions. The financial center that is Beirut has been strongly affected by Civil War. Its regional supremacy and role as an intermediary have been challenged, including by some Gulf cities. However, the qualities of its banking sector, guaranteed bank secrecy, and tax exemption for investment income still attract large amounts of foreign capital. This has become the necessary condition for sustaining a tremendous level of public debt (70 billion US$ mid-2015, 145% of the GDP) thanks to the investments in Treasury bonds.

Domaines

Géographie

Dates et versions

hal-04028706 , version 1 (14-03-2023)

Licence

Paternité - Partage selon les Conditions Initiales

Identifiants

Citer

Bruno Dewailly. A Predominant Banking and Financial Sector. Presses de l'IFPO; CNRS - Liban. Atlas of Lebanon. New Challenges, , pp.54-55, 2019, 9782351597477. ⟨10.4000/books.ifpo.13238⟩. ⟨hal-04028706⟩

Collections

CNRS
23 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More