Fixing Public Procurement in Lebanon
By Hani M Bathish Public procurement is at the root of all waste and corruption, those who hold the authority to make the decisions of how, from whom, for how much and what goods and services to buy with public funds, are often responsible for the worst decisions that end up wasting billions of dollars in public money. When in the rare instances these people do their jobs right, no one knows about it. In Lebanon, during the brief tenure of former prime minister Hassan Diab, the Lebanese Parliament passed Public Procurement Law 244/2021 which was published in the official gazette in July 2021. International agencies and donors noted that the law was a major achievement along the long road towards reforming the Lebanese state. It was a thoroughly well-crafted piece of legislation that took one and half years to complete and is arguably among the best laws of public procurement in the world, including those found in many developed western countries. But few in Lebanon made much of a