Meeting on small and medium businesses calls for fair and protective legislation

Data and Investment Consult Lebanon held yesterday its second meeting of experts for small and medium enterprises at the Coral Beach Hotel in which it announced the launch of the first electronic business incubator and insurance assessment system in the Middle East. Work groups specialized in developing and assisting such enterprises to activate their merger with digital economy was also formed. In his opening speech, the Company’s Director General Maan Barazi stressed the need to create a legal formula that allows the legislator to give those enterprises a comparative advantage in market access and enforcement of taxes. The first work meeting was headed by Adnan Hajj, editor of As Safir newspaper’s economic page who disclosed that 80% of nearly 54 thousand enterprises in the country recruit between 5 to 20 employees and are thus classified as small and medium. Hajj pointed out that the overall size of the presently 16900 subsidized loans has reached LBP 8700 billion but that SMEs are the least to benefit from these loans. Likewise, Director of the Association of Banks in Lebanon, Najeeb Shucair revealed that the number of debtors in 1993 stood at 32 thousand (both individuals and institutions), amounting to a total of USD3 billion in loans. But with the progressive credit facilities and incentives, he explained, the number has now increased to 800 thousand debtors with a total value of USD 52 billion in loans, thus outweighing GDP. (As Safir, 17 June 2015)