In an interview with “Sky News Arabia”, the general manager of “Rafeeq Al-Bawab & Partners” company, Basem Al-Bawab, said that “thousands of companies in Lebanon have either reduced their size or closed their doors,” but he pointed out that “the industrial, agricultural, cleaning materials, services and restaurants sectors witnessed growth and improvement. It was not negatively affected, while the clothing, watches and luxuries trade sector witnessed a decline and closure of some of its institutions..
According to Al-Bawab, a university professor, since 2019 until today, between layoffs and self-resignations, companies have lost nearly 500,000 employees from the private sector in all fields.
He added: “With this, the number of employees decreased from one million and 300 thousand to about 800 thousand workers and employees currently, while some of these employees migrated, and others resorted to working in free professions, and the rest remained without work.”
Al-Bawab noted that “the steadfastness of companies in this situation is not easy, as some of them deliberately restructured and reduced their size, except for some companies whose situation was bad and did not have any future for continuity, as the high costs of transportation and electricity burdened companies.”.
On the other hand, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the “Penta” company for the pharmaceutical industry, Bernard Tannoury, said that “the industrial companies are able to withstand, as the crisis is global, and therefore the increasing opportunities that Lebanon will witness overshadow the recession.”
In an interview with “Sky News Arabia”, the man admitted that there are “many factories that were forced to close their doors or stop working permanently, but the majority of factories in Lebanon worked more during the crisis.”.
According to Tannuri, a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Industrialists in Lebanon, “In the midst of the crisis, Lebanese industrialists were able to increase their investments in the country and abroad, and open new markets for them, relying on themselves and their creativity, in the absence of any support from the state or abroad.”
He also saw that “the global crisis today is focusing on energy, oil and gas sources, and its effects will increase, but this reality will give a lot of incentives to industries and alternative energies.”.
Tannuri pointed out that there are “12 pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in Lebanon, affiliated with about 400 distribution companies, and about 1,600 employees live in the sector,” noting that these companies “cover the Lebanese market, export abroad, and introduce hard currency into the country.”
#solutions #difficult #Lebanons #companies #closure #layoffs