$250 million loan
for renewable energy

Financed by World Bank for the Litani River Authority

The World Bank has approved a $250 million loan for a project to step up renewable energy through the restoration of electricity grid services and support for continued implementation of reforms.

The project, which will be implemented by the Litani River Authority, aims to enable cleaner, more reliable, and efficient grid services.

The loan will be provided by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is the World Bank’s lending arm to middle-income developing countries.

The World Bank said that it is also activating emergency response plans to repurpose resources in its portfolio in order to respond to urgent needs of the population. “This would include emergency support to displaced people that could be deployed through a digital platform the World Bank helped put in place during the COVID epidemic and which has served as a robust modality to transfer targeted support,” the bank said.

Losses and damages to housing, businesses, and other infrastructure in conflict-affected areas are estimated by the World Bank at $750 million as of July 2024. “We are rapidly preparing an update to this assessment that will cover the increased damages and losses from the most recent developments,” the World Bank said.

It said: “The succession of crises that Lebanon has experienced since 2019 had caused poverty to skyrocket.” The World Bank estimates poverty to have more than tripled over the past decade, reaching 44 percent of the population.