Tripoli projects repackaged
as a logistics hub and gateway

Economic zone, port, rail, and airport

The government has unveiled a package of project contracts and memorandums of understanding aimed at turning Tripoli and its port into a regional logistics hub. These projects translate long-standing ambitions for the nation’s second capital. The agreements were organized jointly by the Tripoli Special Economic Zone (TSEZ), the Tripoli Port Authority and the Public Transport and Railway Authority. They shift the stage from planning documents to active execution across three interlinked sectors: the port, the economic zone and the rail network.

Delayed projects poised to be jump-started
The government framed the initiative as a response to years of missed opportunity in Tripoli, the North and Akkar, where it said delayed projects and unfulfilled promises had held back growth. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said that the city’s geography, sitting at the meeting point of the Eastern Mediterranean and its inland trade routes, has not changed even as wars, crises and neglect disrupted the infrastructure meant to capitalize on it. The task now, he said, is converting that location, together with the port, the economic zone, the René Mouawad Kleyat Airport and the transport network, into a functioning economic system rather than a set of disconnected institutions. “The port is the gateway to markets, the economic zone acts as the mechanism that turns trade into investment and value added, and the rail and road links are the connective tissue that lowers the cost of moving goods and widens the area a business can reach,” he said.

Port capacity set to grow sevenfold
The Minister of Public Works and Transport, Fayez Rasamny, laid out the scale of the transformation underway at the port itself. Around 20 development projects are planned there over the next three years, including a modern Customs inspection yard now under construction and an upcoming tender for new storage facilities that will include refrigerated warehouses. The port is also moving to adopt a system to digitize and speed up its procedures. The most significant change concerns container handling capacity. An expansion of the existing terminal, for which bids have already closed and an award decision is expected within weeks, will lift maximum throughput from around 250,000 to about 800,000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) a year. A subsequent phase of terminal expansion is intended to push total capacity above 1.8 million TEUs under the port’s master plan, a jump Rasamny called a change in the port’s size and role rather than a simple upgrade.

Rail link to Syria back on track
A parallel priority is reconnecting Tripoli’s port to Syria by rail through Abboudieh, with a further link toward Homs and the Syrian network. Rasamny said Lebanon and Syria have agreed to form a joint technical team to review and update existing studies, assess routes and technical needs and estimate expected traffic before moving to implementation and financing requirements. The port is already funding part of the update to the design study for the Tripoli Abboudieh line, and separately financing a study of the legal and regulatory framework and licensing system for the special economic zone, a form of direct co-funding officials pointed to as a working model for cooperation between public institutions with a shared economic goal. If that Syrian connection is eventually extended toward Iraq, Jordan, the Gulf and Turkey, officials argued, the port’s addressable market would extend well beyond Lebanon itself.

Reactivated institutions and a pending airport
Beyond the port, the government has installed a new board at the port authority and begun work on a strategic development plan alongside infrastructure and digitization upgrades. At the special economic zone, the governing authority and its board have been reactivated, a public private partnership structure has been set, and work has started on a licensing system and single window process. On the rail side, a consultancy has been engaged to update the design of the Tripoli Abboudieh line, moving the project from concept to a modern feasibility and cost study. Construction on the René Moawad Kleyat Airport has moved into actual implementation, with rehabilitation works advancing toward eventual operation. Officials also said they have relaunched efforts to reactivate the Rachid Karami International Fair, aiming to restore its economic, investment and cultural role.

The pitch to investors
The projects are being framed as a direct signal to prospective investors rather than a set of promises to be judged later. Rasamny said the additional port capacity opens room for new shipping lines, new operators, fresh capital and logistics and industrial services that grow up around port activity, and urged investors to treat Tripoli’s combination of expanding port capacity, a maturing economic zone, a rail link back in motion and a second airport as a measurable opportunity rather than a bet on future goodwill. Salam struck a similar note, saying the government’s own yardstick for success will be projects that can be financed, procedures that are transparent, licenses that are clear and institutions that honor contracts and deadlines, adding that trust is rebuilt through an accumulation of sound decisions rather than a single announcement.