Doing business in Lebanon

Despite many years of on and off war Lebanon has a remarkably strong economy. This is especially surprising when you consider that they don't have large oil reserves to help them out. The country has become the major banking center of the region and has done a very good job of attracting business. The result is that there are excellent opportunities for starting a business in Lebanon, providing you are willing to take the risks.

In a lot of ways doing business in Lebanon is different than doing business in other Middle Eastern countries. For the most part countries in the area are either very rich due to their oil wealth or very poor. Lebanon is neither, they don't have huge reserves of oil but they do have a strong economy. The main reason for the strong economy in Lebanon is that they have become a major banking center for the area. They also have one of the most highly skilled work forces in the Middle East. These two things have combined to allow Lebanon to become a strong middle income country despite having few natural resources and little industry.

One of the main attractions to doing business in Lebanon is the almost complete lack of any regulation. Setting up and running a business is very easy and the government by and large stays out of the way. This is dramatically different than the way things are done in other Middle East countries and has been a major factor in Lebanon's success. Of course there are disadvantages to doing business in an environment where there is little regulation. That being said most companies would rather have too little regulation rather than too much.

There is a lot of opportunity in Lebanon right now both because of fairly strong economic growth and because of the need to upgrade and repair infrastructure. Unfortunately Lebanon has a history of conflict and there have been a number of wars fought in the area. Obviously this does damage to things like roads, power plants, telecommunications and a whole lot of other things. All of this needs to be repaired and upgraded, while at the same time the government is trying to privatize a lot of it. This means lots of opportunity.

There are however challenges to doing business in Lebanon, the biggest is the security issues. Lebanon has been involved in several wars and has fought a civil war in recent years. While there is peace right now how long that will last is anybody's guess. That means that if you are going to do business in Lebanon you will need to have a contingency plan in the event things flare up again. There are also issues like having to deal with a different culture and corrupt government officials. While the government takes a hands off approach it will likely be necessary to offer small bribes to low level officials to get things done.