Lebanon says talks on securing World Bank funding will wrap up in early 2022

Lebanon's energy minister said on Wednesday that talks on securing funding from the World Bank are progressing and will wrap up in the first months of 2022, according to a tweet from the prime minister's office.

Walid Fayad added, after a meeting with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, that an electricity deal could be signed with Jordan by the end of the year. 

The Lebanese are facing a deteriorating economic crisis that began in late 2019 and is rooted in years of mismanagement and corruption.

The economic collapse has been described as one of the worst in the world in over 150 years. Inflation and prices of basic goods have skyrocketed in Lebanon, which imports more than 80 percent of its basic goods.

Shortages of basic supplies, including fuel and medicine, and restrictions on bank withdrawals and transfers, particularly in foreign currency, have increased the desperation of the Lebanese in the once middle-class country.

The crisis has since only been compounded by the pandemic, bickering among rival political groups and a massive explosion at the port of Beirut in August 2020 which killed more than 216 people and injured thousands. It also destroyed major parts of the capital.