One Question, your Excellency! - Ministry of Energy and Hydraulic Resources.

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Dear readers and partners in our faith in Lebanon,

Introduction

The Lebanese Center for public information, faithful to its commitment to work incessantly to narrow the gap between the citizens and their "Dawle", has decided to start today a new mode of dialogue between the taxpayers and the Authorities.

This dialogue will take the form of some candid and direct questions that we shall address, at least once a day, to one of our thirty ministers and to the parliamentary commissions concerned on the subjects that most interest and sometimes puzzle the citizens.

We earnestly ask our ministers to answer these questions or have them answered directly on that blog or to the following email address: George@cpi-lebanon.org

We hope that this new initiative will serve in some small way to break down the barriers of incomprehension and suspicion that currently separate the taxpaying citizens from the tax collecting Authorities.

1.- One Question, your Excellency!

Our question today is addressed to HE the Minister of Energy and Hydraulic Resources, Gebran Bassil and concerns, as one would have guessed, the problem of the electricity.

Minister Bassil, we shall not beat about the bush. We are already aware of the myriad of challenges that you currently face in this ministry and their huge negative impact on the economy of our country.

We have only one question in mind:

 “ WHY THE ACCOUNTS OF THE ELECTRICITE DU LIBAN FOR THE YEARS 2002 TO 2009 HAVE NOT BEEN AUDITED AND PUBLISHED, IN SPITE OF THE URGENT RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE  PARIS III FUNDERS SINCE 2006?"

When the citizens realize that the losses sustained by EDL in 2009 represented over seventeen per cent of all the taxes that they paid during that year, one cannot blame them for asking how and why these vast sums were lost.

The answer to this question can only come from the report of internationally accredited auditors who were specially appointed more than four years ago to perform this assignment.

Minister Bassil, we are very grateful for the immense efforts that you are deploying to solve the thousand and one problems that afflict EDL. We also appreciate that you are presently one of the few ministers to openly recognize the need for a FIVE YEAR PLAN for your Ministry, a plan that the citizens should be made aware of and approve. More importantly that Plan will also serve as a benchmark, a guideline and a yardstick to assist the future Energy ministers in their task. It will allow the citizens to monitor the implementation of that Plan during the next five years. When will your Plan be ready and when will the citizens be allowed to read it in extenso?

But we still insist on knowing why the EDL accounts have not been audited since 2001 and when it is expected that they will be? Unless this is done the heavy contribution to EDL losses reported in the Public Finance Monitor published every year by the Ministry of Finance will remain unexplained and unrelated.

I wish to quote one example that recently puzzled the experts. In 2009 the EDL loss contribution went down by 7% compared to 2008. During that same period the average price of crude oil in 2009 fell by 41%.

Only independently audited accounts can provide the answer to that puzzle.

Sincerely yours

George Sabat