LEBANON - Banque Du Liban Governor Karim Souaid was recently elected Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) for the coming year, during the Fund's 49th annual meeting. The news raises a fair question: what exactly is the AMF, and what, if anything, does it mean for Lebanon?
The institution
The Arab Monetary Fund (AMF) was founded in 1976 and has operated since 1977 out of Abu Dhabi. It's a sub-organization of the Arab League, and all 22 Arab League states are members, including Lebanon.
The Fund's founding agreement lays out seven objectives. The first three are the core, recurring ones: correcting balance-of-payments imbalances among member states, removing restrictions on current payments between them, and establishing shared policies for Arab monetary cooperation. The remaining four are more specific: advising member states on investing their financial resources in foreign markets when asked to do so, promoting the development of Arab financial markets, settling current payments between member states to encourage intra-Arab trade, and, longer-term, paving the way toward a unified Arab currency. That last objective dates back to the Fund's founding vision and remains largely aspirational; no unified Arab currency exists today.
In practice, these objectives translate into two main activities: lending and infrastructure.
On lending, the AMF offers loans on concessional terms tied to agreed reform programs. These have gone to countries like Jordan, Yemen, Morocco, and Egypt over the years, to help with balance-of-payments gaps or specific shocks like rising oil import costs.
On infrastructure, its flagship project is Buna, a multi-currency payment platform launched in 2018 that lets Arab central banks and commercial banks settle cross-border payments directly, in regional and major international currencies, without routing through Western correspondent banks. Buna now counts well over a hundred participating banks across the region, alongside global partners like Mastercard.
Where Lebanon stands
Lebanon has been a founding member of the AMF for nearly fifty years, but based on available records, it does not appear to have drawn on AMF lending facilities, nor do Lebanese banks currently appear among Buna's listed participants.
Lebanon's more active relationship with Arab joint financial institutions runs through a different body: the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), based in Kuwait. Also founded with all Arab League states as members, AFESD has a separate mandate from the AMF. Rather than balance-of-payments support, it finances long-term development projects: infrastructure, water, education, electricity.
To date, the Arab Fund has extended 29 loans totaling KWD 549.5 million to Lebanon, alongside 54 grants worth roughly KWD 19.9 million, for projects spanning water conveyance, education, and public infrastructure.
Among these notable projects are the Litany Water Conveyance Project, which supported the reclamation of 15,000 hectares of land, and the construction of Lebanon’s University Campus, which hosts 12 faculties and offers unique learning opportunities to thousands of students.
The 2025 high-level mission to Beirut
That relationship was reaffirmed in May 2025, when AFESD's Director General and Chairman, Bader Al-Saad, led a two-day high-level mission to Beirut, the Fund's first official visit to Lebanon since March 2023.
The mission came at a moment when Lebanon was drawing renewed international attention following its presidential elections and early steps toward economic recovery.
With a Lebanon portfolio nearing two billion dollars, AFESD framed the visit as a push to align with the country's emerging national priorities and unlock new public and private sector investment.
Al-Saad was quoted at the time saying the Fund stood ready to support Lebanon's national priorities and help fast-track projects that could contribute to the country's development and economic potential. The mission involved meetings with Lebanese officials aimed at identifying which ongoing or upcoming projects might be prioritized for financing, rather than announcing any new loan agreement on the spot. Arab Fund
What the chairmanship is
The AMF Board of Governors' chair is a one-year, rotating position among member states' governors. The seat changes hands annually, and the role itself is presiding over the Board rather than running the AMF's day-to-day lending or operations, which falls to the Fund's Director-General.
The 49th annual meeting that elected Souaid was attended by finance ministers and central bank governors from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Syria, Morocco, Oman, and Jordan, with discussions centered on strengthening Arab monetary cooperation and AMF support to member economies more broadly.
The chairmanship and the AFESD mission both reflect Lebanon's longstanding place within Arab financial institutions. What this continued engagement yields in practice will depend on how Lebanon's own economic priorities align with these institutions' financing and cooperation frameworks going forward.
