BEIRUT (middle-east-online) -- The Lebanese economy has weathered many storms and should maintain its resilience after this Sunday’s closely fought parliamentary election, whatever the outcome, analysts said.

Few are prepared to predict who will win Sunday's poll -- the current parliamentary majority or the Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah-led alliance.
But analysts agree that no matter how far apart Lebanon's political rivals are, they stand united on one issue -- preserving the stability of the economy.
“Both parties believe in the same fundamentals,” said Fadoie Mansour, director of the Centre d'Etudes Bancaires, a private think-tank.
“Nothing will change. Lebanon has a liberal economy and it will remain so whether the opposition wins or the majority,” she said.
For Nassib Ghobril, chief economist at the Byblos Bank Group, a leading private institution, Lebanon's monetary authorities will defend economic stability at all costs.
“The monetary authorities are prepared for any eventuality, not only for who wins the majority in parliament, but also for what will happen later when the new government is formed,” Ghobril said.
The Islamic resistance movement Hezbollah and its allies, who include Christians, have accused the majority of corruption.
The United States has warned that a victory for Hezbollah could affect the future of its military aid to Beirut, but the Islamic resistance movement dismissed the significance of such move as the country could rely on receiving more generous aid from Iran.
Ghobril and Mansour both said that the stability of the Lebanese pound, which has been pegged to the dollar at around 1,500 ever since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, was key to the health of economy.
“The stability of the currency is a national issue, not a political one,” Ghobril said.
Lebanon has a market-based economy famous for its private banking sector which has earned the tiny Mediterranean country the moniker of “Switzerland of the Middle East.”
But the country has been struggling with a 47-billion-dollar public debt and growth projections for this year have been cut from five percent to three.
The International Monetary Fund said in March that the economy “has so far shown remarkable resilience in the face of the unfolding global financial crisis.”
It paid tribute to “prudent macroeconomic and financial policies in recent years,” notably an interest rate that has supported deposit inflows and a build-up of international reserves.
According to the World Bank, “deposit inflows to Lebanese commercial banks increased by 3.7 percent (2.7 billion dollars) between August 2008 and January 2009.”
Ghobril said: “Whoever is in power must work to maintain confidence in the banking sector. This is our main asset.”
In January 2007, international donors gathered in Paris pledged 7.6 billion dollars in aid for Lebanon on condition that the government carry out reforms in such money-draining institutions as the electricity department.
Last November, the IMF awarded Lebanon 37.6 million dollars in new financing on top of 76.7 million dollars in emergency funding agreed after the devastating 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon.
Photo: Lebanese on their cell phones in Beirut. (Joseph Barrak/AFP/Getty Images)