President announces decentralization plan

Efforts targeting infrastructure
and environment

President Michel Sleiman announced the near launch of a full-scale administrative decentralization plan, during the third Lebanon Economic Forum organized by Iktissad Wal Aamal Group on March 8.

Sleiman said: “A unified and comprehensive development plan must be put together to achieve economic and social balanced development.” The plan should include sectoral sub-plans to achieve projects for infrastructure, environment protection, waste treatment, bio-energy production, and gas use.

Maximum priority must be given to the process of oil and gas exploration and production, according to him. “It’s not difficult to allocate the necessary funds to finance all of these programs, if we rationally select the appropriate resources,” he said.

Sleiman said that “support policies must be reconsidered and privatization of some public facilities must be adopted to improve production quality and reduce costs,” underlining the need to approve the Public Private Partnership law.