Lebanon has been facing compounded challenges with its largest peace-time socio-economic and financial crisis, aggravated over time and intensified by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on key sectors of the economy, the consequences of the explosion of the Port of Beirut in 2020 and the war in Ukraine in 2022. Owing to the lack of political consensus for pursuing and implementing effective reforms to enhance governance and accountability of public services and to generate State revenues and reduce expenditures, the multi-dimensional crisis continues to persist, although the 2022 parliamentary elections showed growing support for candidates representing civil society and demanding reform.

Public administrations in Lebanon are marked by low quality and accessibility of public services, suffering from weak decision-making processes, absence of clear vision, lack of transparency and accountability leading to increased corruption and weakening the public service delivery. The sectarian regime, nepotism and confessional power sharing running across all government ministries and institutions creates inefficiencies in the public administrations, room for corruption and misuse of public funds. This results in citizens and businesses wasting time and resources undermining the image of public services, distracting officials from achieving good results and advancing on public administrative reform. With the crisis, salaries of civil servants have plummeted resulting in an increasing number of highly qualified Lebanese migrating in search of better opportunities.

Following the explosion of the Port of Beirut in 2020, the European Union launched, jointly with the United Nations and the World Bank, the “Reform, Recovery and Reconstruction Framework (3RF)”. The 3RF addresses the impact of the explosion on affected communities and businesses in Beirut; in addition, it focuses on critical reforms, including enhancing transparency, accountability and integrity of the public administration. These reforms are notably to be achieved through the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy 2020-2025 (NACS), of which the recent nomination of the members of the National Anti-corruption Commission is crucial to the monitoring of the implementation of reform.

In addition, in 2021, a new Public Procurement Law was passed in Parliament, based on international standards and following a MAPS assessment. This Law establishes a new, independent Public Procurement Authority, which was preceded by a Tender Board that had been part of the Central Inspection.

The new Public Procurement Law (PPL) was ratified by Parliament in June 2021 and entered into effect in July 2022. The National Public Procurement Reform Strategy (NPPRS) and Action Plan were launched in January 2022 by the Prime Minister in the presence of WB, EU, AFD, UN, UNDP, government stakeholders, private sector and CSO representatives, calling for coordination and further financing for implementation of the strategy. The NPPRS and its action plan (2022-2024) was approved by the Council of Ministers on May 20, 2022. The reform strategy has set four strategic objectives to guide and advance procurement reform in Lebanon:

1.      Bring the regulatory and policy framework in line with good international practices.

2.      Create an institutional framework for successful procurement management and build corresponding capacity.

3.      Economy and efficiency in procurement operations and practices.

4.      Promote accountability, integrity and transparency in public procurement.

The new Public Procurement Authority requires a lot of aid, especially as it is the first of its kind to be established in Lebanon.

Accordingly, a new EU Program Action started end of November 2023, with a duration of 4 years, that aims to support progress in key areas of public administration reform in Lebanon through enhancing the integrity, transparency and accountability of its public administration aligned with the principles of a modern public administration. It consists of three outcomes:

1. Safeguarding integrity of the public administration, mainly in the area of public human resources management (i.e. civil service reform);

2. Enhancing transparency in public administration systems, mainly in the area of public procurement at central and local level (i.e. public financial management reform) and access to public information (i.e. accountability);

3. Strengthening accountability of the administration by reinforcing the role of the main oversight bodies (i.e., Central Inspection Board, Court of Audits and National Anti-corruption Commission) in implementing reform, fighting and preventing corruption.

The component 2 is complementary with a previous AFD-funded project, implemented by EF, which aimed to support public procurement reform in Lebanon. It had a duration of29months (ending date April 2024) and supported the Lebanese authorities in structuring and monitoring the reform, implementing the legal and regulatory framework at the operational level, building the capacities of institutions and public procurement agents, and improving the transparency and integrity of the system.

As the French public agency and the interministerial actor in international technical cooperation, subsidiary of the Agence française de développement Group (AFD Group), Expertise France has been implementing the program (indirect management), in strong connection with  the Public Procurement Authority.