Head of Statistics Lebanon Rabih Haber announced on Saturday that 5,500 factories have shut down in Lebanon during 2019 due to the economic and financial crisis, LBCI local TV channel reported.

Haber noted that factories in Lebanon need around 3 billion U.S. dollars to buy raw materials for their production.

"We should focus on activating the economic cycle in a bid to settle our loans or else we will go through the same experiences of Argentina and Venezuela," he said.

Haber, whose company's job is to develop polling and research studies, added that 50,000 hotels reservations were cancelled during the two last months of 2019 while tourism activity dropped by 90 percent in Beirut and it was non-existent outside the capital.

"We are in the worst period of our history on all levels," he said while adding that 500 restaurants and 6000 companies selling cars closed in the last quarter of 2019.