Prime Minister Najib Mikati chaired a meeting this morning at the Grand Serail devoted to discussing World Bank projects in the power and energy sector.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Prime Minister Saadeh Al-Shami, Minister of Finance Youssef Khalil, Minister of Energy Walid Fayyad, Regional Director of the World Bank in the Middle East Saroj Kumar, Representative of the World Bank in Lebanon Mona Kouzi, Director General of Electricité du Liban Kamal Hayek, and Mikati advisors MP Nicolas Nahas, Samir Al-Daher and Ziad Mikati.

Following the meeting, Fayyad said: “We discussed a plan to revive the electricity sector, and adopted parallel paths to advance it, the most important of which are, increasing feeding hours as soon as possible, reducing waste by adopting a plan in cooperation with Electricite du Liban and service providers, as well as supporting the Security Forces and the judiciary to follow up on violators, and we also set numbers to reduce waste is in the plan.”

He added: “The tariff must be adjusted to cover the bulk of the cost to Electricité du Liban, which will provide citizens with electricity at a cheaper cost, as it will be for about 75% of subscribers at a cost of less than 14 cents per kilowatt hour, and the expected cost of the house will be 60% less than the cost of private generators.”

Regarding the signing of an energy contract with the Jordanian side and the possibility of increasing the hours of feeding, he said, “We are discussing with the World Bank the issue of financing, and the Jordanians and Egyptians must finally be assured that the contract will not be subject to any negative repercussions as a result of Caesar’s law. Then we can receive Jordanian electricity and Egyptian gas, and this is likely to be done in the next two months before the beginning of spring.”