France to Donate Buses to Lebanon in Integrated Transport Plan

French Transport Minister delegate Jean-Baptiste Djebbari arrived in Beirut on Thursday to donate buses to Lebanon.

Djebbari will sign with Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamiyeh a memorandum of understanding.

France will successively provide Lebanon with buses as part of an integrated transport plan. The first donation will be 50 buses, Hamiyeh said.

A surge in gasoline prices and an unprecedented economic crisis have exacerbated the need for public transportation, that is effectively non-existent in Lebanon.

Several proposals over the decades to revamp public transport have been shelved. In 2018, the World Bank approved a $295 million package to jumpstart the country's first modern public transport system.

The Greater Beirut Public Transport Project, however, never took off, as Lebanon has been struggling since 2019 with a major financial crisis dubbed by the World Bank as one of the planet's worst in modern times.

Lebanon has had a railway network since the end of the 19th century but it has been out of service since the start of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.

Spain is also expected to sign a deal with Lebanon to finance a plan to revive the railway network.