Lebanon is facing a financial meltdown so severe that the World Bank has branded it as one of the worst since the mid-19th century. The country is fast spiralling into a dangerous situation of state failure, marked by violent riots, escalating blackouts and spiking fuel price increases.<\/p>\n
According to Rami Hajjar, portfolio manager at Allan Gray, the Lebanese crisis shows how things can go wrong when mismanagement of public policy and corruption are the order of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile South Africa is in a very different position to Lebanon, the events there act as a valuable lesson to understand how quickly things collapse if there is a lack of sound economic policy, fiscal discipline, and no strong, independent institutions to maintain a functioning economic and financial system,\u201d said Hajjar.<\/p>\n
He added that all too often, the root of a crisis lies in a country consistently spending beyond its means.<\/p>\n
Looking at the unfolding crisis in Lebanon, Hajjar discusses the top flags that warn of a country\u2019s near financial collapse.<\/p>\n
1. Getting stuck in a debt spiral<\/strong><\/p>\n According to Hajjar, Lebanon\u2019s crisis was born out of the financial and economic policies it undertook to attract large foreign inflows to finance the reconstruction of the country. To do so, the currency was pegged (providing confidence in the monetary system), high interest rates were provided, and capital movements were fully liberalised.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the economy was coming off low grounds, and the tax base was tiny, the budget was financed with a large amount of debt. The government relied on domestic borrowing, amassed in local currency, to meet its overall financing need. Most of that came with very high interest rates, given the risk premium demanded by investors to finance a broken country. With high costs of borrowing, the overall fiscal deficit expanded rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n Between 1993 and 2019, the government earned a cumulative revenue of around $170 billion and cumulatively spent around $260 billion, resulting in a deficit of $90 billion. This is compared to an estimated cumulative interest payment of $87 billion, which means that interest was responsible for the full cumulative deficit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes just a few years of reckless spending to get stuck in a debt-overhang spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. Embezzlement of public money through nepotism<\/strong><\/p>\n Hajjar said that the reconstruction project involved massive embezzlement of public money through nepotism in the awarding of contracts, an overt shift of wealth from the public to private entities, and tenders greatly exceeding project costs.<\/p>\n \u201cSome estimates put the amount of waste at more than 50% of the total cost of reconstruction,\u201d he said. \u201cBy 2019, Lebanon had one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios in the world. As a consequence, interest payments consumed around 50% of government revenue by 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n 3. Spending on a bloated public sector bill and broken state entities<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cMost of the public spending was not generating economic value. The two main sources of primary spending were public sector wages (a highly bloated public sector that served sectarian patronage), and subsidies to the broken state-owned \u00c9lectricit\u00e9 du Liban (EDL), where deeply entrenched vested interests blocked any reform,\u201d said Hajjar.<\/p>\n 4. A country consumes more than it produces, and is over-reliant on imports<\/strong><\/p>\n Lebanon consumes more than it produces and relies heavily on imports.<\/p>\n \u201cThe export base is tiny due to long-standing neglect of the productive sectors at the expense of the service sector, an overvalued exchange rate, and a commitment to open trade with no policies to protect domestic industries.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that the link between the budget deficit and the current account deficit is important.<\/p>\n \u201cBudget spending comprised three main items: interest expense, wages, and subsidies to EDL. Nearly half of interest expense was in US dollars, and most of the EDL costs were in foreign currency. As for wages, even if they were paid in local currency, consumption spending would automatically lead to US dollar outflows as the country relied on imports to meet 85% of its daily needs.\u201d<\/p>\n 5. Over-reliance on remittances<\/strong><\/p>\n In Lebanon\u2019s case, the main source of financing was not exporting, which is a sustainable way that countries usually finance capital outflows. Instead, the country relied on the constant inflow of remittances from the Lebanese diaspora (there are an estimated 12 million Lebanese living abroad versus 6.5 million in Lebanon) that were channelled through a perceived strong banking sector.<\/p>\n \u201cRemittances are not a sustainable way to finance a huge deficit. They are volatile in nature, as a large part accumulate as liabilities on the banking sector\u2019s balance sheet, making them susceptible to sudden outflows,\u201d said Hajjar.<\/p>\n 6. The (dubious) role of a central bank<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe net reserve figure of Lebanon\u2019s central bank showed a worrying picture,\u201d said Hajjar.<\/p>\n He explains that as Lebanon started to see diminishing inflows, which intensified in 2015, the central bank, Banque du Liban, underwent a series of transactions dubbed \u201cfinancial engineering\u201d, meant to solve serious problems: the central bank\u2019s foreign exchange shortage, the funding needs of the treasury, and the insufficient capital and liquidity of private banks.<\/p>\n \u201cIn short, the central bank paid banks an exorbitant return on dollar deposits to bolster its dollar reserves. This provided a windfall boost to bank earnings and capital (effectively a money-financed capital injection without any equity stake in return \u2013 i.e. a direct transfer of taxpayer money to a few wealthy bankers),\u201d said Hajjar.<\/p>\n He said that to maximise the benefit from the scheme, banks were incentivised to attract new dollar inflows by offering high rates to expats (and as a concomitant significantly reduced lending to the real economy, exacerbating the problem).<\/p>\n \u201cThe effect of this was the strengthening of the central bank\u2019s gross reserves in the short term.\u201d<\/p>\n The central bank, in turn, was using that money to finance both the current account (i.e. continue supporting the currency peg) and the government (which at that point was struggling to raise foreign exchange debt on the market). The net reserve figure (which accounts for liabilities \u2013 and was never published) turned red and continued widening.<\/p>\n \u201cBasically, a large Ponzi scheme was at play. The central bank was paying very high interest to banks and banks to customers by crediting accounts without generating the return on the cash. On the contrary, the central bank was spending the money and relying on new money to finance outflows,\u201d said Hajjar.<\/p>\n 7. Blind and stubborn trust in the banking system\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cThe role of the psychology of crowds in averting\/precipitating crises is fascinating: As long as people did not know that a devious scheme was taking place and confidence existed, the scheme could continue.\u201d<\/p>\n On 17 October 2019, the WhatsApp communication tax proposed by the government triggered large protests that carried on for weeks. The banks (which were partly a target of the protests, blamed for generating super profits over the years, and not paying a fair share to the fiscus) closed their branches for a week.<\/p>\n Confidence was lost. As they opened again, a run on the banks occurred, particularly from expat-holders of dollar accounts. The banks could not meet that demand. Unofficial capital controls were immediately put in place and the system collapsed.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took only a matter of weeks for the Lebanese to appreciate that value in the financial system was artificial, and that their hard-earned lifetime savings were no more.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that in the months prior to the crisis, most average financially educated people in Lebanon still held the majority of their savings in a deposit account.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile they understood that the country\u2019s metrics were worryingly grave, they were complacent about the situation, arguing that it had always been the case and that trust in the system would continue no matter what. Until it did not, and this happened overnight.<\/p>\n \u201cUltimately, Lebanon ended up with a three-pronged crisis: a balance of payment\/currency crisis, a sovereign debt crisis, and a banking crisis,\u201d Hajjar said, adding that it is wise to monitor the above red flags in economies that are under pressure.<\/p>\n
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