Lebanon’s economic crisis has been in the making for several years stemming from long-standing structural fiscal challenges, and the situation further deteriorated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The powerful explosion at the Port of Beirut on 4 August 2020 damaged many of the city’s enterprises, threatened their operations and exacerbated the economic crisis.
This report presents results from a phone survey of 1,664 enterprises located in the areas surrounding the explosion site. It maps out the characteristics of the enterprises, the explosion’s impact on them and their workers, and their adaptation and coping measures. The report also looks at the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on these businesses.
The project was made possible through the generous contribution of the Netherlands, under the framework of ‘Partnership for improving prospects for forcibly displaced persons and host communities
(PROSPECTS), and from Germany through the German Development Bank (KfW), which is funding the ILO’s Employment Intensive Infrastructure Programme in Lebanon.
