he World Bank approved a $300 million additional financing to Lebanon’s poor, providing cash payments to help families struggling through the country’s historic economic meltdown, the institution said in a statement Friday.

The new financing comes two years after the World Bank approved a $246 million loan to Lebanon to provide emergency cash assistance to hundreds of thousands in the tiny Mediterranean nation of 6 million people.

Lebanon is in the throes of the worst economic and financial crisis in its modern history. The meltdown, rooted in decades of corruption and mismanagement by Lebanon’s ruling class, began in October 2019 and has left more than three quarters of Lebanon’s population in poverty.