Years of delay continue to pile up while billions of dollars in deposits remain trapped since the 2019 financial collapse.
Bank restructuring is meant to determine which banks are viable, which need to merge, and which may have to be liquidated. Meanwhile, the financial regularization law is supposed to decide how losses will be distributed between the state, Banque du Liban, and commercial banks, as well as how depositors will recover their money.
The cost of returning up to $100,000 per depositor is estimated at around $22 billion, in addition to bonds that could amount to another $14–15 billion.
Nearly seven years into the crisis, delay itself has become a cost borne by depositors and the economy, while banking reform and the recovery of deposits continue to be pushed from one proposal to another.
