Lebanon is hiring management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to help restructure an economy that's overly reliant on remittances and banking, and grappling with high unemployment, Economy and Trade Minister Raed Khoury said.

This model is "becoming very risky" and no longer sustainable, Khoury said, predicting that if nothing is done, the debt-to-GDP ratio will go as high as 170 percent in the next few years. He said Lebanon should aspire to emulate the economy of Singapore, another small country with many ethnic groups.

Lebanon's governance has suffered from the legacy of the 1975-1990 civil war, and the country didn't have a budget for 12 years until parliament passed one in 2017 .

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