Public Corporation for Housing makes a comeback in Lebanon’s 2027 budget

Finance Minister Yassine Jaber announced on Aug. 31 that he submitted the draft 2027 budget to the Cabinet. The following day, he wrote on X that the draft would include several “new measures,” among them funding to restart the Public Corporation for Housing’s (PCH) operations.The state-run housing agency, which helps lower-income households buy homes, stopped accepting new applications following the onset of Lebanon’s financial crisis in 2019.The PCH — which is sometimes confused with Banque de L’habitat, a mixed-ownership institution — relied on subsidized housing loans provided by Banque du Liban (BDL) before the crisis. That lending program was subsequently discontinued.Many civil servants took advantage of these loans, particularly after the adoption of a new public-sector salary scale in 2017, which contributed to widening the...