During the conference "Arab Economic Security Amid Geopolitical Changes" at the Venice Hotel, Prime Minister Najib Mikati stated: "No matter the trials and difficulties that our nation faces, it still harbors many energies, abilities, values, human resources, and geographical advantages that can enable it to restore its health and status according to the capacity of its community, with the cooperation of its brothers and friends in the Arab world and the entire globe." He added: "Lebanon has gone through bright stages of stability, growth, prosperity, and peacebuilding. However, the country is currently struggling with numerous intertwined crises, in a regional climate filled with tensions, challenges, threats, and aggressive wars. These challenges bear heavy on the Lebanese people who are suffering from an unprecedented economic, financial, and humanitarian crisis, and from the loss of essential moral and material resources that enable them to endure and then rise and recover."
He mentioned: "The first national challenge lies in the vacancy of the presidency and the inability to elect a new president, which results in institutional and political instability, exacerbating the economic and financial crisis, and hindering the launch of economic and financial reform plans that the Lebanese rely on to save the country from dire circumstances, rebuild the state, institutions, and agencies, enhance the role of the private sector and startups, leading to the restoration of trust, attracting foreign investments, and reviving tourism in our lands. You know that viable investments arise only from the womb of the crises we experience. Therefore, I invite you all to have confidence in this country."
He continued: "The challenges increase and intensify with Israel's continued occupation of parts of our land in southern Lebanon, ongoing aggression, violations of Lebanese sovereignty, and breaches of UN Security Council resolution 1701. Our goal remains to work to avoid sliding into a comprehensive regional war while reinforcing peace and security in the region and asserting the authority of the Lebanese state over all recognized territory. It is also important to mention, among the challenges, the successive waves of displacement that have affected us in Lebanon over the past decades, whose economic, social, and humanitarian repercussions touch all aspects of life in the country. The most prominent regional challenge is represented by the Palestinian cause and the suffering of the Palestinian brotherly people who are under occupation and are struggling to attain their rights."
Mikati emphasized: "In the economic, financial, and developmental field, faced with this immense array of challenges, we are keen on preparing an investment environment that nurtures promising opportunities, including stimulating the economic cycle and enhancing political and economic relations with Arab countries, which are our main trade partners, with the potential to head towards new markets in specific competitive sectors in the future." He concluded: "Our goal is to continue to work gradually to resolve the current economic-financial crisis and save the country according to a specific timetable, which includes enacting necessary reforms, laws, and legislations, distributing financial losses, approving and implementing the 'capital control' law, safeguarding the funds of depositors in Lebanese banks, and restructuring the banking sector fairly and justly. This also includes meeting our local and global financial obligations, restructuring debts, building reserves in foreign currencies, reducing spending, enhancing revenues, and attracting foreign investments. Perhaps most importantly, enhancing the path of accountability, combating corruption, and money laundering, and confronting extremism and terrorism."
