00:00 And news overseas, four years since the economic meltdown began,
00:04 Lebanon has seen its currency lose 98% of its value, its GDP shrink 40%, inflation soar to
00:11 triple digits and two-thirds of its central bank's foreign currency reserves go down the drain.
00:16 This is one of the worst economic crises in the last 150 years,
00:21 simply put according to the World Bank. Still, this summer has brought back customers filling
00:26 out restaurants and bars across the land to dine out and party late into the night,
00:31 thanks to remittances from working loved ones and the world over to pay for the tab. This report.
00:36 Just a few years ago, Batroun was a sleepy seaside town on the Lebanese coast. These days,
00:42 the summer sees thousands of people descend on its winding streets to fill expensive bars and
00:46 restaurants, many of them newly opened. It's a scene repeated all over the country, even though
00:51 Lebanon is caught in what the World Bank has called one of the worst economic crises the world
00:56 has seen in the last 150 years. Jamil Haddad is the owner of Colonel Beach Club and Brewery.
01:01 If I was a foreigner and I come to Batroun, I wouldn't believe what you can see here.
01:11 You come here and you see every day a new high-end restaurant is opening, a new bed and
01:18 breakfast, a new beach place or whatever. The local currency, the lira, has become so
01:24 devalued and volatile that the country has gone through a process of informal dollarization.
01:29 Many families rely on remittances sent from the extensive Lebanese diaspora.
01:34 Lebanon has the second highest remittances to GDP ratio in the world, and it is around 40%.
01:44 You spend it on consumption products. You are not going to invest. You cannot invest
01:49 with remittances. You cannot create jobs with remittances. You are going to consume
01:55 to spend in restaurants and clothes and schools and universities.
02:00 Those without access to dollars face a starkly different reality.
02:04 Pascale Sarkar lost her job as a nursing assistant and has struggled to find work since. Her son is
02:09 in the army, but hyperinflation has reduced his salary to the equivalent of $60 a month,
02:14 just enough to buy his own food.
02:16 The people who come from outside, they come to eat, to dine and all of that. They have money,
02:23 they have dollars. But the Lebanese who are here, they have nothing at all.
02:27 Even if they work, it's nothing.
02:29 To a casual observer, everything looks fine in Batroun. But the crowds hide a dangerous trend,
02:36 the disappearance of Lebanon's middle class.
02:38 There was a mid-class in this country before the crisis. Educated people, employees, good job,
02:46 living okay life. There are plenty of these people and we used to see them a lot before the crisis.
02:54 They disappeared from the market because these people, they became poor. Because these people
03:01 are the ones who save their money in the bank.
03:03 This summer, the restaurants may be full, but Lebanon's famed ability to party through any
03:08 crisis is papering over dangerous rifts in the fabric of its society.
03:12 Jacob Russell for VOA News, Batroun, Lebanon.
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