The World Bank has released their 2012 Doing Business report and Lebanon has fallen to a rank of 104 in terms of ease of conducting business in the country. The 103-page report details a number of key criteria that were reviewed including the addition of a new measure – Getting Electricity – which surprisingly, Lebanon has shown improvement (from 52 to 47) over the course of a year.
Just to clarify, getting electricity does not mean flipping the switch and the lights turn on but rather how easy it is for a company to get connected to the grid.
Regionally, Lebanon does not fair too well. We are ahead of Egypt (110) and Syria (134) but lag behind Jordan (96), Turkey (71), the UAE (33) and regional king Saudi Arabia (12).
So it seems Khalaf Al Habtoor’s (Chairman of Al Habtoor Group) claims of a poor investment environment in Lebanon is clearly founded.