The World Bank Group's Doing Business 2019 report ranked Lebanon in 142nd place among 190 countries and jurisdictions worldwide and in 13th place among 22 Arab countries and territories in terms of the ease of doing business. Lebanon's global rank dropped six spots from 136th place in the 2018 survey, while its regional rank regressed by one notch year-on-year. Lebanon also came in 42nd place among 51 upper middle-income countries (UMICs) in the 2018 and 2019 surveys.

The index is a composite of 10 sub-indices of business regulations that track the time and cost to meet government requirements for business start-up, expansion, operations and insolvency. The ease of doing business rankings in the 2019 survey are based on the distance to frontier (DTF) score, which measures the gap between an economy's current performance and the best performer around the world on each sub-index. The DTF scores range from zero to 100, with a score of 100 representing the "frontier", or the best performer.

Lebanon's DTF score is 54.04, compared to 53.97 in the previous survey. It came below the Arab average score of 55.14 and significantly below the global average of 62.52. Lebanon was among 162 countries and territories that posted an increase in their DTF score in the 2019 survey. The World Bank indicated that Lebanon did not enact any reform related to the business environment between June 2, 2017 and May 1, 2018, while 128 of the 190 economies covered enacted at least one business regulation reform during the same period.

Globally, Lebanon had a better business environment than Tanzania, Mali and Nigeria, and a weaker business climate than Pakistan, Cambodia and Senegal among economies with a GDP of $10bn or more. It also ranked ahead of only Algeria, Gabon, Iraq, Equatorial Guinea, Libya and Venezuela among UMICs.

The results of the Byblos Bank/AUB Consumer Confidence Index for the third quarter of 2018 show that the Index decreased by 5.7% in July from the preceding month, and was nearly unchanged in August and September 2018. The Index averaged 75.3 in the third quarter of 2018, constituting a marginal increase of 1.5% from 74.2 in the second quarter of the year. In addition, the Byblos Bank/AUB Present Situation Index averaged 66 in the third quarter of 2018 and decreased by 2.3% from the preceding quarter, while the Byblos Bank/AUB Expectations Index averaged 81.4 and grew by 3.6% from the second quarter of 2018. Further, the average monthly score of the Index in the third quarter of 2018 was 29% lower than the quarterly peak of 105.8 registered in the fourth quarter of 2008, and remained 22.1% below the annual peak of 96.7 reached in full year 2009. 

The ongoing delays in the formation of a new government, following the May 2018 parliamentary elections, led to the stagnation of consumer sentiment in Lebanon during the third quarter of the year and sapped any momentum in confidence that the elections generated. Lebanese citizens had high expectations following the elections that the various political parties would quickly form a government and implement concrete measures to improve their quality of living and economic well-being, as they were led to believe that changing the electoral law would improve the performance of politicians and would result in better governance. Instead, citizens discovered that the political behavior of most parties hardly changed after the elections, which led to lost opportunities for the Lebanese economy and triggered rumors about the stability of the Lebanese pound and the state of public finances. 

The third-quarter results show that 11.5% of the Lebanese polled in the third quarter of 2018 expected their financial conditions to improve in the coming six months, nearly unchanged from 11.9% in the second quarter of the year. In parallel, 58.1% of respondents in the covered quarter believed that their financial situation will deteriorate and 28.2% forecast their financial condition to remain the same in the next six months. In addition, 9.9% of the Lebanese surveyed in September 2018 expected business conditions in Lebanon to improve in the coming six months compared to 11.2% in June 2018, while 67.4% of respondents anticipated business conditions to deteriorate, relative to 67.8% in June 2018.

Jones Lang LaSalle's Global Real Estate Transparency Index for 2018 ranked Beirut in 139th place among 158 cities worldwide and in 10th place among 15 Arab cities included in the survey. 

The index measures national real estate transparency in cities across the globe and is used to compare transparency conditions across markets. It highlights the important differences in transactions processes, property rights, and the regulatory and legal environment around the world. A city or market with a perfect 1.00 score is considered to have a high level of transparency, while a score of 5.00 represents the lowest transparency level. The survey then assigns cities and markets to one of five transparency levels that are "Highly Transparent", "Transparent", "Semi-Transparent", "Low Transparency" and "Opaque".

Globally, Beirut's real estate market is more transparent than markets in Muscat, Tunis and Kampala, and is less transparent than markets in Kigali in Rwanda, Quito in Ecuador and Panama City. Beirut received a score of 4.18 points in the 2018 survey, and lagged the simple global average of 2.7 points, and the Arab average of 3.8 points. Further, Beirut's real estate market came in the "Opaque" category in the 2018 survey, along with 21 other cities in the world that include Luanda, Abidjan and Caracas. Overall, four Arab cities came in the "Semi-Transparent" category in 2018, five Arab cities have "Low Transparency" and six cities came in the "Opaque" category in 2018.