Beirut, Lebanon – On a recent afternoon at the Oriental Paper Products factory just outside of Beirut, more than a dozen workers were busy on the factory floor, grateful for their jobs producing notebooks, papers, and office supplies.
But one level up, in CEO Ziad Bekdache’s office, the mood was far grimmer. Not for the first time, the industrialist found himself adjusting his employees’ salaries to compensate for yet another fall in the Lebanese pound.
The numbers shuffling pushed him more step closer to a reckoning he’s managed to put off since the country first plunged into economic crisis more than two years ago.
“We have a problem,” Bekdache told Al Jazeera. “We industrialists are rooted here in Lebanon, but when you have a noose around your neck, you can either try to struggle or decide to leave.”
Oriental Paper Products opened its factory in 1955. During the decades, it has exported products to countries…
