Lebanon Begins Cutting Power to About 100 Public Institutions Over Unpaid Bills
Lebanon's Ministry of Energy and Water has begun cutting electricity to about 100 public institutions that have not paid their bills. The cutoff began to take effect on Monday, according to Al Jazeera.
Power was already scarce for many households. State-provided electricity in Beirut has dropped from about 21 hours a day to between two and four hours, and some days bring no state power at all, Al Jazeera reported.
The crisis has also become a political dispute inside the cabinet. Energy Minister Joe Saddi, a member of the Lebanese Forces (LF) party, pledged in early October 2026 to boycott cabinet meetings to press the government over the electricity crisis. On the Thursday before November 3, three ministerial colleagues from the LF joined him in boycotting a cabinet meeting. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam leads the government.
The cutoffs are not entirely new. On October 24, 2023, Electricite du Liban, the national power utility, began gradually cutting power to public administrations and institutions with overdue bills. In a December 2025 addendum to its Cost Recovery Plan, a document setting out how the utility would recover its costs, the company said it would activate its bylaws by cutting supplies where necessary and start legal proceedings to recover accumulated amounts.
Lebanon has also seen a complete loss of grid power before. In October 2021, the national grid shut down amid a severe economic crisis after the country's two biggest power stations stopped because of fuel shortages. Reuters reported that supply was restored on October 10, 2021.
The economic strain is wider than the power sector. The World Bank projects that year-on-year inflation, the change in prices compared with the previous year, will be 17.5 percent in Lebanon in 2026.
