by middleeastmonitor.com — Lebanon’s pound tumbled on Tuesday towards 10,000 to the dollar, a record low for a currency battered by a financial meltdown that has fuelled poverty and unrest, reports Reuters. The collapse, on a scale Lebanon has never seen, has slashed about 85% of the currency’s value in a country relying heavily on imports. The cost of scarce dollars hit 10,000 Lebanese pounds on Tuesday, said three currency dealers on the informal market, a main source of cash since banks stopped dispensing dollars. Two other dealers said earlier the greenback had traded at 9,900. That makes Lebanon’s minimum wage worth about $68 a month. Dozens of protesters blocked roads with burning tyres in central Beirut, on the road to the airport, and near the city of Baalbek. Others shut down a foreign exchange bureau in the southern city of Sidon, local media said. “We can’t bear it anymore… The dollar is going up and they don’t care about us. They’re still dividing up their gains,” Rabih Khaled, who has been unemployed for months, said at one of the protests.

Political leaders have failed to agree on a rescue plan since the crisis, rooted in decades of state graft, erupted in late 2019 as dollar inflows dried up. At the time, protests had gripped the country, fuelled by anger over economic hardship and new tax plans, including a daily 20-cent fee on Whatsapp calls. Prices of many consumer goods such as diapers or cereals have nearly tripled since then. Charities warn of rising hunger. The currency last touched lows close to 10,000 in the summer of 2020, weeks before the huge August port blast that devastated much of Beirut.

 

by AFP — The Lebanese pound hit an all-time low against the dollar Tuesday, prompting angry new protests over a deepening economic crisis that has thrown more than half of the population into poverty. The pound had been pegged to the dollar at 1,500 since 1997, but the country’s worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war has seen its unofficial value plummet. On Tuesday, it was trading at nearly 10,000 pounds to the dollar on the black market, money exchangers told AFP. “It’s crazy what’s happening,” one money exchanger said on condition of anonymity. In the evening, dozens of protesters blocked off roads in Beirut and other parts of the country, some of them burning tyres. “What is happening is unacceptable… People need to revolt,” one protester told a television channel in the capital.

There were also demonstrations in the northern city of Tripoli, Saida in the south and in the eastern region of Bekaa. Before the latest downturn, the pound had briefly stabilised at 8,000-8,500 to the greenback in recent weeks. In July, it had reached 9,800 to the dollar. The dizzying depreciation came as the central bank started reviewing Lebanon’s lenders, under international pressure for reform. As part of a series of demands, it had given them a Sunday deadline to increase their capital by 20 percent. – ‘They’re starving us’ –

On Monday, a central bank committee “agreed on a roadmap with deadlines for the Bank of Lebanon to take appropriate measures” if these requirements were not met, it said in a statement. Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper said Tuesday that the currency plunge was partly the result of commercial banks sucking dollars out of the market to meet the capital demands of the central bank. But he noted that this was just one factor for the Syrian pound’s drop in value on the black market. Parts of Syria controlled by the government, under Western sanctions, have long relied on Lebanon as a conduit for dollars. Lebanon was rocked by mass protests in 2019 against a political class deemed inept and corrupt, but those demonstrations largely petered out after the coronavirus pandemic arrived in the country.

Maha Yahya of Carnegie’s Middle East Centre said Lebanon’s political leaders had prevented an economic rescue plan from taking shape. “#Lebanon’s Lira (pound) collapses further — political deadlock continues and no policies to stem the collapse!” she tweeted. She warned that the falling pound could “trigger wide spread protests, violence & significant breakdown in law & order.”