At the 2024 Freedom Dinner on November 21, Lebanese Institute for Market Studies was announced as the winner of Atlas Network's prestigious 2024 Templeton Freedom Award and its US$100,000 prize. The Templeton Freedom Award is generously sponsored by the Templeton Religion Trust.
Due to Lebanon’s escalating economic crisis in 2020, the Lebanese government expanded the Central Bank’s subsidy program to include essential commodities such as food, medicine, and fuel—leading to unsustainable fiscal deficits, market manipulations, and widespread shortages. In response, the Lebanese Institute for Market Studies (LIMS) successfully advocated for the termination of the harmful subsidy programs, removing price controls that were causing shortages in gas, electricity, and medicine. After five years of advocacy, major subsidy programs were lifted on more than 300 food items, wheat, fuel, infant formula, and medications, with products previously purchased on the black market returning to store shelves. Most notably, LIMS prevented another Central Bank bailout in 2023, helping reduce government spending by over $6 billion in bank subsidies, with Lebanon’s parliament even ratifying a zero-deficit budget for the first time in decades by January 2024.
