The finance ministry is said to have asked Electricité du Liban to establish a repayment plan of nearly $ 25 billion in advance received between 1997 and 2020.
As a reminder, the advances received by the EDL constitute the third item of public expenditure annually, accounting for almost 3% of the GDP annually. They were notably induced by the decision of the state in 1997, to impose a price of electricity production on the basis of a barrel of oil at around 15 USD, inducing a large differential between production cost and price at the sale of the kilowatt hour and consequently, a significant annual deficit of up to $ 2 billion annually.
EDL’s financial situation worsened further with the obsolescence of its power plants further increasing costs and the financial inability for it to build new ones.
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In 2019, the Hariri III government had yet adopted a public electricity restructuring plan consisting in increasing the production capacity of Electricity of Lebanon which currently amounts to 1900 megawatts to more than 3500 megawatts initially, or the current maximum demand. One of the main objectives of this plan – besides increasing production capacity – is to reduce the public deficit caused by Electricité du Liban.
