Economic Growth and Social Development

Linking Economic Growth to Social Development (LEGSD)
Janvier 11-13, 2000 Riviera Hotel, Beirut-Lebanon

Linking Economic Growth and Social Development in Lebanon to create a virtuous cycle of human progress and growth, was the subject of deliberations between policy-makers and practitioners in Government, civil society, the private sector, development agencies and the media. They convened in Beirut on 11-13 January 2000 in a conference hosted by the Ministry of Economy and Trade and the Ministry of Social Affairs. The conference was organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Lebanon and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies with substantive support from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), and financial support from the UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS). The Conference was an interactive forum, where background and situation analysis, identification of main issues and problems, presentation of options and choices, and alternative policy recommendations. If you would like to obtain a hard copy(ies) of the full report,

Ten years after the Taëf agreement and the end of a protracted and devastating conflict, and at the eve of the second decade of national rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts, Lebanon was evaluating and reconsidering its economic and social priorities and exploring a new development strategy for the coming decade.

In June 1999, the Lebanese government adopted a five-year financial adjustment plan to deal with the heavy burden of the accumulated public debt, reduce the budget deficit, reform the fiscal system, increase state revenues, and engage into a gradual policy of privatization and public sector reform.

In December of 1999, the Lebanese government is planning to adopt a five-year development scheme, to focus the energies on the country's identified comparative advantages, increase its competitiveness in the global and regional economy, continue to modernize its infrastructure and upgrade its human resources, and insure a better social and regional balance in participation to development, access to resources and economic rewards.

The National Conference on Economic Growth and Social Development Policies, organized by the UNDP with substantive support from DESA and in partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Social Affairs and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, was a timely contribution to the current Lebanese debate on public choices and strategic orientations for the economy and society into the next decade.

The Conference involved, as speakers: paper authors, discussants and participants, some of the major stakeholders from the policy-making community, the research community, the civil society, the private sector and the media. The Conference was conceived as an interactive forum, where background and situation analysis, identification of main issues and problems, presentation of options and choices, and alternative policy recommendations were discussed in a pluralist and dialogal mode.

This conference addressed a wide range of topics relevant to the state of the economy and social conditions in Lebanon.
During the ten sessions, local and international experts made about fifty presentations on a variety of topics such as budgetary analysis, the national debt, social development, labor markets, and globalization.

Publication: Linking Economic Growth and Social Development in Lebanon - Conference Report, 2001. You may contact the UNDP Library to place your order.The report is available in both Arabic (160 pages) and English (224 pages) combined into one publication.

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