No social justice in Lebanon and the unemployment is among the highest in the world according to the World Bank

The World Bank issued a report last week entitled “Global economic horizons – June 2014 - changing priorities and building the future”, which classifies Lebanon the 8th regionally in terms of expected economic growth for 2014.  The report expects Lebanon’s growth to reach 1.5% by the end of this year and foresees an improvement in 2015 to reach 2.5% and then gradually approaching 3.5% by 2016.  The report further expects the deficit in the current account to reach 6.8%, 7% and 7.2% of GDP for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Furthermore, the Bank had organized a seminar last week in collaboration with the Issam Fares Policy Institute at AUB entitled “The World Bank’s response to social justice demands in the Middle East”.  The Bank’s senior economist, Shantayanan Devarajan noted in his talk that there is no social justice in Lebanon which has as unemployment rate that is considered amongst the highest in the world and which doubles amongst youth and reaches 60% amongst women.  Devarajan added that all basic services such as health care and education are below standards whereas the infrastructure is of poor quality.  He added that electricity is absent for a considerable amount of time in many regions in the country whereas the roads condition is bad and transportation costs are high.  Also according to Devarajan, the low level of labor intensive industries is one reason behind the current high unemployment.
In its coverage of this seminar, the Al Akhbar newspaper noted that, according to Devarajan, the root causes of the present social and economic problems is the failure of successive governments and of the political system altogether, without referring to the role of the World Bank itself in perpetuating these problems, even if partially, through imposing on governments policies of economic restructuring and shrinking of the state structure.  
Source: Al-Diyar, Al-Akhbar 16 June 2014