At a glance, Lebanon’s poor road conditions reflect a picture common to developing countries, where inadequate budgets are allocated for road construction and maintenance. However, in Lebanon, large amounts of money are allocated every one or two years for paving and maintenance of roads, raising serious questions about the monitoring of contractors and their work. The article below explores government spending on roads over the past ten years and its results.

Cost of road maintenance

The Lebanese government allocated a total of LBP 715.3 billion ($475 million) for the maintenance and rehabilitation of roads in the 1994 –2003 public budgets. Table 1 shows the annual distribution of those funds (the figures do not include expenditures authorized by MPs, which amount to LBP 150 billion, or $99.5 million for the years shown). ...Full Story