Terry Glavin: For months before the coronavirus pandemic added plague and death to the country’s agony, trash was piling up in the streets, the electrical supply in parts of Beirut was available for only four hours a day, unemployment had shot up to 35 per cent, the cost of food had gone through the roof and the Lebanese lira was reduced to a fifth of its value against the American dollar.
Lebanon had become another Venezuela, even before the country defaulted on its debts in March. Talks with the International Monetary Fund have gone nowhere. Lebanon’s national debt now stands at $92 billion — 170 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product — and Transparency International ranks the country at 137 out of 180 countries on its corruption index.
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