Two hours a day. That was the best the national grid could manage for much of 2022. By January 2023, even that had shrunk. Households in Lebanon now count on roughly an hour of state-supplied electricity daily. The rest comes from private generators, if they can afford the fuel.
That single number — one hour of power — captures the scale of the collapse. It is not merely an inconvenience. It shuts down refrigerators, water pumps, medical equipment. It forces families to choose between buying generator fuel and buying food. And it is a direct consequence of the liquidity crisis that became fully apparent in August 2019, a crisis the country has not escaped.
The causes are layered. Before 2019, the central bank governor masked the fragility of Lebanon’s economy through financial engineering. That bought time, but not stability. Then came three shocks in quick succession: the COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut port explosion in August 2020, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each hammered an already brittle system.
Sanctions also played a role. Measures targeting Syria’s former government and Iran-backed Hezbollah, intensified under the Trump administration, squeezed Lebanon’s economy. The country’s financial system had long been intertwined with both Syria and Hezbollah. When the sanctions tightened, the liquidity problem deepened.
The result on the ground is brutal. The Lebanese pound has lost a staggering share of its value. By January 15, 2023, the annual inflation rate stood at 221.3 percent. That number is not abstract. It means a loaf of bread that cost 1,000 pounds in early 2022 now costs 3,200. It means salaries, if paid at all, buy a fraction of what they did.
Public services have collapsed alongside the currency. Drinking water is scarce. That scarcity has contributed to disease outbreaks. Lebanon has reported cholera cases — a disease linked to contaminated water and poor sanitation. The country had not seen a major cholera outbreak in decades.
The crisis did not arrive all at once. Liquidity shortages were present in the years before 2019. But the full extent of the problem was hidden. The central bank governor, whose name is known, used financial engineering to keep the system afloat. When the facade cracked, it cracked hard.
Households now face a daily calculus that would have been unthinkable five years ago. Can I afford the generator fuel today? Do I have enough clean water? Is the food in the market priced within reach? The answers are increasingly no.
The international community has taken notice, but meaningful relief has been slow. The sanctions that contributed to the crisis remain in place. The political class that presided over the collapse has not been replaced. The central bank has not been restructured.
One hour of power. Cholera cases. Inflation at 221 percent. These are not separate problems. They are the same problem expressed in different forms. The liquidity crisis that began in August 2019 has become a comprehensive failure of the state’s ability to provide basic services. And there is no clear end in sight.
