BLBG meeting Jan '11 - traffic in Beirut

The British Lebanese Business Group (BLBG for short) met on Tuesday this week.

The group has been fortunate enough to attract some really good speakers living and working in Lebanon in the past, but never before a Director of a British Company viewing the business climate here from the outside. Johnny Ojeil is just that, a Director of Arups, the British multi-national construction firm, he’s a son of Birmingham, but with recent Lebanese ancestry. The group was pleased and honoured to have him as guest speaker.

He was actually upbeat listing professionalism, language skills and being technologically savvy as some of the positive traits of the Lebanese workforce. Being a pleasant place to live, having a plethora of local firms willing and able to do business with overseas companies and the ability to move money freely in and out of the country he identified as positive characteristics of Lebanon’s business environment, together with an apparently strong economy is spite of those things listed below.

There’s always a downside and his “con” list included political uncertainty and cash flow in the sense that if cash (not the same thing as money!) is not available, then projects just stop. That there is no urban planning policy and that projects spend a long time gestating were things at considerable variance from European practice so beware and be ready.

Local partnership is the way forward for any company seeking to do business here; this was both his experience and recommendation. He seemed both cautiously optimistic yet with a positive “and here’s a way to do it” message.

Now Mr. Ojeil’s own specialty is urban traffic planning and he’s acting as consultant to Bierut’s Solidere. He painted a grim picture of where Beirut could be heading without a mass transit solution that would appeal to all but the truly moneyed classes. Luxury buses, with train inspired interiors could be an inexpensive solution able to be implemented quickly and cheaply with the political will to make it happen. There was some amusement at the idea of bus lanes in Beirut (“for each bus they’d be five Mercedes in the lane, three in front and two behind”) which stimulated debate on the issue of traffic enforcement. The amusement evaporated as he left us in no doubt as to the consequences of increasing dependency on the four-wheeled friend; “next time you explain that you are late because of traffic, don’t forget that you were part of the problem and not just the victim”, “look where Bangkok got to, four hour queues!” He ran a computer simulaton, to show us future potential Downtown Beirut traffic flow – ouch! Johnny helped solve Bangkok’s problems, so he’s to be taken seriously.

A lively question and answer session followed with many of the over fifty participants joining in until we broke for a final round of networking, as well as a final round at the bar.

Looking forward to the next session already.

Please note that any divergence from fact and reality in the record above should be attributed to your errant reporter (me) and not to our guest.