Unfortunately, the current Lebanese government is as guilty as its predecessors on a wide range of issues and misdeeds. One of such major misdeeds is the ongoing deceit as to the true economic conditions of Lebanon based on the free use of fabricated numbers under the false label of "statistics".

Like Hariri and his assistant Siniora, prime minister Hoss and finance minister Corm relied in their recent presentation of the new budget, and their underlying economic and fiscal policies, on a number of numbers allegedly representing Lebanon gross national production. The Hoss-Corm numbers are a blind adoption of the Hariri-Siniora numbers and are equally untrue!

For there is no department of government in Lebanon that has the capability of collecting reliable economic statistics and keeping national income accounts. And no such reports officially exist. Furthermore, there has been no national census in the last two thirds of the century.

The Hariri-Siniora fabrications were based on the imagination of one economic researcher employed by a Beirut bank secretly controlled by Hariri. They were intended to support the Hariri borrow-and-spend policies that plunged the country in an enormous public debt.

If the real GDP of Lebanon does not exceed half the figure in circulation, which many of us suspect to be the case, then everything that flows from there, including IMF and World Bank conclusions and recommendations, is seriously and dangerously flawed. Furthermore, the Hoss-Corm team would be playing with fire and taking the responsibility for the catastrophes to come.

Prime minister Hoss should have the political courage of telling the nation that his government has no reliable economic statistics on which to base its policies. His government should then embark on a crash program of national income accounting. To determine the income per capita the government should call for a national census. Such a census is also needed as a basis of all economic, housing, educational and public health policies, and to establish national socio-economic priorities.

As to the IMF and the World Bank, they should demand national income accounting and a national census as preconditions for further assistance and cooperation. Otherwise they will continue to find themselves in the classical position of the blind leading the blind.