Former minister Raed Khoury advises new government to recycle the McKinsey Plan

Former Minister of Economy and Trade Raed Khoury (FPM) "advises" Nawaf Salam's government, formed on Feb. 8, to use the McKinsey plan as a basis for organizing the structural reforms the country's economy needs, estimating that its content is "still valid at 90 percent." This is not the first time since the beginning of the crisis that the former minister, who is also a member of the executive board of Cedrus Bank, attempted to convince successive governments to recycle this plan. Last April, an MP from the Free Patriotic Movement parliamentary group, Farid Boustany, also announced his intention to bring this plan back from the drawers.

Speaking in a statement relayed by the state-run National News Agency (NNA), Khoury said that he commissioned this plan from the international consulting firm when he joined the government formed by Saad Hariri at the end of December 2016. The country was then emerging from a presidential vacuum of more than two years, which ended with the election of Michel Aoun, similar to how the election of Joseph Aoun on Jan. 9 ended another period of more than two years during which the Baabda Palace remained unoccupied.

The McKinsey plan cost the Lebanese state $1.3 million. Made public in 2019, it proposed recommendations to boost the productive sectors and the country's exports, setting quantified objectives for 2025 and 2035. Its critics reproached it for being too generic and too costly.