Reconstruction debates usually begin with a funding question: how much money is needed, and who will provide it?
Across the Middle East and North Africa, that question is now unavoidable. The latest war has added destruction and disruption to a region already strained by conflict, state fragility, displacement and financial collapse. It has also exposed dependence on vulnerable trade routes, energy corridors, ports, utilities, power and water systems.
Reconstruction needs now exceed what conventional funding channels can meet. Syria’s reconstruction costs alone have been estimated at more than $200 billion by the World Bank. Across the wider region, redevelopment will be larger still, and many countries have far more limited access to resources than those in the Gulf.
Grants, multilateral lending, sovereign borrowing, Gulf support and private capital will all matter. But they will not be enough. At this scale, mobilising the public balance sheet becomes unavoidable.
The public sector owns much of the asset base on which reconstruction and resilience must rest: ports, airports, utilities, energy networks, water systems, transport corridors, logistics assets, public financial institutions, state-owned enterprises and vast urban real estate. These are not marginal holdings. They are the operating architecture of the economy.
The task is therefore not simply to raise money. It is to govern the public commercial assets on which reconstruction, investment and resilience depend.
Fiscal stress often turns public assets into an emergency cash machine: land, enterprises and infrastructure are sold, pledged or monetised for short-term liquidity. Some transactions may be appropriate. But rushed or poorly sequenced deals can destroy public wealth and weaken long-term fiscal capacity, precisely when the region needs that asset base to support recovery.
The challenge differs across the region. In the Gulf, the issue is often not the lack of assets, but vast state-linked portfolios that are not always governed coherently as part of a wider public balance sheet. In North Africa, fragmented ownership and fiscal pressure make urban real estate, state enterprises and concessions tempting sources of quick liquidity. In the Levant and other conflict-affected economies, reconstruction risks include fragmentation across donors, ministries, municipalities and state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
But the sequencing problem is common. Before assets are sold, pledged or placed into new vehicles, and before reconstruction capital is committed, leaders need portfolio visibility.
Portfolio visibility is not transparency. Transparency is disclosure. Portfolio visibility is the ability to see beyond fragmentation across ministries, municipalities, SOEs, utilities, ports, airports, transport bodies, development agencies and public financial institutions, and to understand how these assets fit together as an economic portfolio.
Nor is an asset register enough. A register records what individual agencies already know they own. It may help with control, maintenance and compliance.
An asset map asks a different question: what could the public portfolio become?
This matters most for urban real estate, often the most hidden and largest asset class. Land around ports, airports, railways, utilities, hospitals, schools and state enterprises is usually treated as an operational by-product. Once mapped as part of a portfolio, it can reveal development value, revenue potential, housing capacity and strategic optionality.
But urban real estate is only part of the picture. A proper asset map must also include operational commercial assets: transport systems, utilities, ports, airports, public financial institutions, SOEs and other revenue-generating entities.
Only with portfolio visibility can leaders build a portfolio business plan: how public assets should create value, reduce risk, increase fiscal space and strengthen debt sustainability. The sequence is simple: asset map, business plan, professional governance, execution. Establish visibility, decide what the portfolio is for, then create the commercial institutions needed to deliver it. Only then should restructuring, partnerships, listings, concessions or divestitures begin.
Once public commercial and infrastructure assets are visible and professionally governed, they can become part of the region’s financial architecture. Viable SOEs and infrastructure companies can issue bonds or sukuk rather than rely only on sovereign guarantees or state banks. Mature assets can be prepared for initial public offerings, strategic partnerships or transparent concessions. Urban real estate portfolios can support development platforms, housing finance and mortgage markets.
This would deepen capital markets, improve governance and free banks to lend more to productive private firms. It would also allow governments to bring in private and international capital from knowledge, not desperation.
A regional development bank or investment fund could play an important role, especially where infrastructure must be regional by design: transport, logistics, power, water, energy and digital networks. But a fund is not a strategy. It should finance investable platforms, not compensate for the absence of asset governance.
For the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, regional institutions and Gulf investors, the question should not only be how much money can be mobilised. It should be whether the assets the public sector already owns – and those it must now rebuild – are visible, governable and capable of absorbing, multiplying and sustaining that capital.
The Mena region does not only need reconstruction finance. It needs reconstruction asset governance as the foundation for a regional financial architecture.
The task is to turn the public balance sheet into the backbone of reconstruction, resilience and regional integration — a platform for stronger public net worth, deeper capital markets and long-term recovery.
Nasser Saidi is the president of Nasser Saidi and Associates and Lebanon's former economy minister and a vice-governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon. Dag Detter is an adviser on public commercial assets and public wealth, and former president of the Swedish government holding company Stattum
