Nasser Saidi

Dr. Nasser Saidi is a Lebanese politician and economist who served as the Minister of economy and industry and the Vice-governor for the Lebanese central banks for several terms in the last decade of the 20th century. He is currently the chief economist of the Dubai International Financial Centre and the executive director of the Hawkamah Institute for Corporate Governance based in the Dubai International Financial Centre in Dubai. He is a former Minister of Economy and Trade and Minister of Industry of Lebanon (1998–2000). He was the First Vice-Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon for two successive mandates, 1993–1998 and 1998-2003. He is co-chair with the OECD of the MENA Corporate Governance Working Group and established the Lebanon Corporate Governance Task Force. He was a Member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (UNCDP) for two mandates over the period 2000-2006, appointed as a member in his personal capacity by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

He has a recent book, “Corporate Governance in the MENA countries: Improving Transparency & Disclosure”,^[1] and a number of books and publications addressing macroeconomic, capital market development and international economic issues in the MENA region.

Dr. Saidi has served as economic adviser and director to a number of central banks and financial institutions in the Arab countries, Europe and Central and Latin America.

Prior to his public career, Dr. Saidi pursued a career as an academic, as a professor of economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago, the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva, Switzerland), and the Université de Genève, and was a lecturer at the American University of Beirut and the Université St. Joseph in Beirut. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Rochester in the U.S.A, a M.Sc. from University College, London University and a B.A. from the American University of Beirut.

As the Minister of Economy and Trade as well as the Minister of Industry during 1998-2000, Dr. Saidi focused on implementing policies, prepared, enacted and implemented some 15 laws supporting economic and financial reform and modernization of the Lebanese economy and industry, including through de-regulation, privatization, increased domestic and external liberalization and opening-up of the economy, expanding trade and economic relations on a multi-lateral, regional and bilateral basis with Arab, European, and Asian countries. In this context, he was the lead negotiator of the Euro-Med Association Agreement between Europe and Lebanon, Lebanon’s entry as an observer into the WTO, in addition to a number of bilateral trade agreements and the implementation of the Greater Arab Free Trade Area.

As Minister of Economy and Trade (MOET), he reformed the insurance sector and prepared a Privatization Law and Programme to improve the pricing, investment, and efficiency of public services (such as telecommunications, electricity, water and other) and reform public finances through the preparation of a five-year public finance reform program to redress public finances. Dr. Saidi also set up a National Committee for IT to promote Lebanon’s entry into the information economy and society, and set-up an Industry Modernization Programme.

During his mandates as First Vice-Governor at the Banque du Liban, Dr. Saidi worked with the team of governors to reduce and control inflation (brought down from 120% in 1992 to about 1% in 2003), ensure the stability and soundness of the banking and financial sector and compliance with international standards in a well-regulated and supervised system, modernize and develop the payment system and develop the financial markets.

Achievements at the Banque du Liban

Achievements at the Banque du Liban (BDL), under Dr. Saidi’s direct responsibility, included:

• Institutional reform: organizational change at the BDL (creation of new departments, including Financial Markets Department) to respond to market changes.
• Creation and introduction of new Money Market Instruments in both LBP and USD for more efficient money supply process control and liquidity management: CD’s, TD’s, Repos, Reverse-Repos and Swaps.
• Establishment of new institutions to develop the financial markets: Beirut Secondary Market, whose trading systems and clearing & settlement procedures were integrated with those of the Central Bank and then migrated to the Beirut Stock Exchange; Dr. Saïdi served as its President throughout his tenure at the BDL.
• Creation of Lebanon’s Central Securities Depository, MidClear, where he also acted as its President throughout his tenure at the Banque du Liban.
• Instituted and implemented policy of introducing IT and BDL business process re-engineering of bank operations and processing by investing in hardware, software development and training of all personnel. IT applications included: bank credit risk exposure; accounting in BDL’s head office and branches, Treasury operations and BDL asset and international reserves management, monetary operations, budget and current operations.
• Computerized Public Debt Management, instituted auctions and procedures systems; introduction of the Debt Management and Financial Analysis System, DMFAS.
• Modernization of financial and banking legal and regulatory infrastructure, with the proposal and implementation of laws underlying fiduciary operations, payment systems, leasing, e-banking, financial brokerage, securitization, securities lending, capital market reform and investment management.
• Development and modernization of the payment system including: multi-currency clearing and settlement of payments; use of SWIFT for international and domestic transactions, standardization and coding of cheques. Policy to ensure compliance with international norms and standards.
• Instituted BDL policy of ensuring compliance with key standards for sound financial systems: Code of Good Practices on Transparency in Monetary and Financial Policies, Core Principles for Systemically Important Payment Systems and Recommendations for Securities Settlement Systems, and Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision.
• Managed Lebanon’s entry into General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) and acted as National GDDS Coordinator.
• Established the BDL-Databank, a centralized statistical data warehouse for the BDL’s internal use, linking it to a national data bank, LebStat.
• The establishment of Lebanon’s Statistics Portal LebStat and Lebanon’s entry into the General Data Dissemination System, to rebuild the country’s statistical reporting capacity and infrastructure, in compliance with the UN and IMF framework and requirements.
• Upgraded monetary, banking, financial and balance of payment statistics (including implementation of CPIS and ITRS) and introduced a Business Qualitative Survey across sectors and regions in Lebanon.
• Improved communication and dissemination of data and information: creation of BDL’s website and series of new publications: Monthly Bulletin, Financial Markets Handbook, regulatory Information pamphlets.
• Provided the vision, objectives and supervision of the feasibility study of the Secure Electronic Banking and Information for Lebanon (SeBIL) project, currently under implementation, to link Lebanon’s banking and financial sector and the public sector with the BDL.
• As the President of the Commission for the Development of Banking Technology and IT (COBIT), Dr. Saϊdi spearheaded many initiatives to rebuild Lebanon’s banking, payments, and financial systems, including: introduction of SWIFT for both domestic and international transactions, check coding, set-up of a multi-currency payment, clearing and settlement system, multi-currency credit card clearing & settlement and linking of all domestic switches for ATM and Point of Sale systems.

References

1. ^ Corporate Governance in the MENA countries: Improving Transparency & Disclosure, Dr. Nasser Saidi

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Name	Saidi, Nasser
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