Raoul Nehme (; born January 20, 1956) served as the Lebanese minister of economy and trade from 2020 to 2021.

Life

Nehme went to school at

Collège Notre Dame de Jamhour In France, secondary education is in two stages: * ''Collèges'' () cater for the first four years of secondary education from the ages of 11 to 14. * ''Lycées'' () provide a three-year course of further secondary education for students between ...

and studied in France at the Ecole Polytechnique (engineering with a major in economics) and

Mines ParisTech Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging *Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun M ...

(engineering with a major in scientific management). He is a part of the

Greek-Catholic Greek Catholic Church or Byzantine-Catholic Church may refer to: * The Catholic Church in Greece * The Eastern Catholic Churches that use the Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite: ** The Albanian Greek Catholic Church ** The Belarusian Gr ...

community.

Career

In January 2020, Nehme was appointed minister of economy and trade by Prime Minister

Hassan Diab Hassan Diab (; born 1 June 1959) is a Lebanese academic, engineer and politician who served as the prime minister of Lebanon from 21 January 2020 to 10 September 2021. He was appointed by President Michel Aoun in 2019 to succeed Saad Hariri as ...

. He joined the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

as President's nominee, though he is himself independent. Prior to his appointment in the government, Nehme worked in the banking industry. He has experience handling several establishments in crisis: *

BLC bank BLC Bank SAL (BLC:LB) is a Lebanese financial institution offering banking, insurance and asset management services. BLC Bank subsidiaries are BLC Finance SAL and BLC Services SAL. BLC Bank SAL is a Lebanese joint stock company registered un ...

(Lebanon) board member (2008–2015) and general manager (2010-2015), after it was put in receivership by the BDL due to mismanagement * T-bank (Turkey) chairman of the board, was brought in after the latter was severely affected by the economic crisis. * AstroBank (Cyprus) chairman of the executive committee (2017–present). He was also a board member of USB bank, a predecessor entity to AstroBank. *

Bankmed Bankmed SAL (Arabic: بنك البحر المتوسط ش.م.ل; formerly ''Banque de la Méditerranée S.A.L)'' is a Lebanon, Lebanese bank, established in 1944, owned by the holding company ''GroupMed''. It is one of Lebanon’s top five banks ...

(Lebanon) executive general manager (June 2018 – Jan 2020). Nehme is the president and co-founder of NGO Jouzour Lebanon (meaning "roots of Lebanon"), an environmental NGO dedicated to reforestation.

Minister of Economy

Nehme's nomination as minister of economy came as Lebanon was experiencing a double

political Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

and economic crisis that resulted in a default on March 9, 2020. The general situation was further complicated by the coincident

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. As minister of economy, Nehme introduced measures to protect the consumer by limiting abusive price increases, banning the exportation of critical medical equipment and implementing measures to mitigate the propagation of the

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...

References

External links

Bank Med Nomination

Jouzour Loubnan (roots of Lebanon)

Lebanon's new government
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nehme, Raoul Economy and Trade ministers of Lebanon Lebanese Melkite Greek Catholics École Polytechnique alumni Mines Paris - PSL alumni 1956 births Living people Free Patriotic Movement politicians