The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS) organized, in
cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer
Foundation (KAF), a national workshop on "Cultural Industries
and Cultural Policies in Lebanon".
The workshop,
opened by the Minister of Culture Dr. Ghassan Salamé, included officials
and key actors, leaders and analysts from the various cultural industries,
including printing, publishing, music recording, movie making, artistic
design, software, performing arts and others. The
workshop contributed to an informed public debate, about the best
ways for Lebanon to build on its comparative advantage, in a world
where the knowledge economy and the creative industries are becoming
major factors of economic growth and social development.
For the
purpose of the project, the cultural industries sector was defined
to include the branches of the Lebanese economy that produce tangible
or intangible cultural and intellectual products.
The major such-sectors were as follows:
- The printing and publishing sectors.
- The music recording sector.
- The audio-visual sector (features films and multi-media production).
- The artistic design sector (graphic design, fashion design, architectural
and interior design, craft design…).
- The software and web design sector.
At the macro-level, the workshop aimed at assessing the significance
of this sector for the Lebanese economy and its major features in
terms of competitive advantage, employment potential, use of national
human resources and talents and export opportunities.
In the absence of sufficient or detailed national or sectoral statistics,
a paper contributed to estimate the share of this sector in the gross
domestic product, the national employment and the Lebanese exports.
The estimates were based on the analysis of available statistical
date (mainly trade statistics) and on information collected from professional
and trade associations, market research firms, firms active in each
of the sectors, and leading experts, analysts and observers.
The purpose could not be to obtain a precise measurement of the economic
weight of the cultural industries, but to arrive at a reasonable estimation
of the overall size of the sector, the balance between its major sub-sectors
and the growth trend over the last decade.
In a second part, the workshop reviewed and discussed the legal and
regulatory framework affecting the Lebanese cultural industries. The
discussion included major laws on printed matters, intellectual property,
customs, taxation and others as well as regulations and regulatory
practices on censorship, trade in cultural goods, copyright enforcement
and collective management of copyright and neighboring rights. The
review relied both on an economic and legal analysis of the major
documents and on perceptions and evaluations as expressed in the jurisprudence
and the opinions of major actors.
In a third part, the workshop included a round table discussion of
the sectoral structure (firm size, market structure, ownership, location…),
and the policy issues (technological policy, price policy, innovations,
external connections, use of cultural assets, marketing policy…) of
firms operating in the Lebanese cultural industries sector (mainly
in the information technologies sector, publishing, music and movie
production).
Publication:
The Cultural Industries and Cultural Policies in Lebanon,
LCPS Publications, Expected end of August 2002
