Economy

How we will cover the economy

The banks, the currency and the budget matter because of what they do to a household budget. That is where our coverage will start.

The Banque du Liban headquarters in Beirut.
The Banque du Liban headquarters in Beirut.

Economic reporting in Lebanon often reads as though it were written for people who already work in finance. Exchange rates, circulars and balance sheets are reported as events in themselves, with the consequence, the part that changes how somebody lives, left as an exercise for the reader.

We intend to invert that.

Every number gets a denominator

A figure without a comparison is decoration. Where we publish an amount, we will say what it is a share of: a salary, a monthly shop, a public budget line.

We will name the source of every figure

Central bank circular, ministry release, company filing, or our own calculation from stated inputs. Where we calculate, we will show the inputs so the arithmetic can be checked and, if we are wrong, corrected.

Forecasts are labelled as forecasts

Projections are opinions with decimal places. When we publish one, we will attribute it and say what it assumes.

Corrections on this beat matter more than most, because a wrong number travels. Ours run publicly, on the page where the error appeared.