Berri convenes joint committees to review pending World Bank loans

BEIRUT — Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has called on the joint parliamentary committees to meet on Monday, Dec. 15, to review several pending bills, including those related to two World Bank (WB) loans that have been awaiting a parliamentary vote for several months.

The first loan, totaling $257.8 million, is intended to improve water supply services in the Greater Beirut and Mount Lebanon area, while the second, amounting to $34 million, is intended to fund a budget management project.

The committees have been called amid repeated appeals from the WB for approval of these two loans — which have already cleared all previous procedural hurdles — along with a third one, a $250 million loan granted in June for the country's reconstruction (Lebanon Emergency Assistance Project, or LEAP), partly devastated by Israeli bombardments during and after the 2023/2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

This third project has already gone through the step of committee review.

Finance Minister Yassine Jaber, who is in close communication with the international institution, has himself said that the delay in passing the loans raises the risk that they may ultimately be canceled.

The joint committees will also have to consider three other, less urgent, legislative proposals: the first relating to aquatic fishing and aquaculture in Lebanon; the second concerning the organization of the Lebanese Red Cross (LRC) and a third focusing on the use and protection, in terms of intellectual property, of the LRC emblem.