by arabnews.com -- Najia Houssari -- BEIRUT: More than 500 candidates, including 69 women, have applied to contest Lebanese parliamentary elections on May 15, with the country’s Ministry of Interior expecting the number to rise dramatically before the midnight deadline on Tuesday. A total of 517 candidates had submitted applications by late Friday. The 2018 elections were contested by 976 candidates, including 113 women, but the number fell after the closure of registrations. As a result, 597 candidates, including 86 women, continued in 77 lists across Lebanese constituencies. The outlook of this year’s election will become clearer after the completion of electoral lists on April 4. Voters will head to the polls on May 15, with candidates competing for the country’s 128 parliamentary seats across 15 electoral districts. A number of the main parties will officially announce their candidates on Monday.

Speaker Nabih Berri will reveal his candidates, including current MPs and defendants in the Beirut Port explosion hearings, at a press conference. The Free Patriotic Movement announced its candidates during its seventh annual conference on Sunday. In an address, the party’s leader, Gebran Bassil, attacked his political opponents, including the March 14 Alliance and the civil movement, which he called “a false revolution,” adding that “they will fall.” Bassil defended Hezbollah and said that its partnership with the FPM in the electoral lists, to be formed later, “is not a program partnership, but a process of integrating votes.” Hezbollah seeks to ensure that the FPM reaches parliamentary seats with the least possible losses. Hezbollah officials have said: “Whoever fails the Amal Movement and Hezbollah is a partner in the largest regional and international attack that wants to destroy Hezbollah, which protects Lebanon.”

by arabnews.com -- Najia Houssari -- BEIRUT: Supermarket owners in Lebanon have blamed “hard-line measures” from the Banque du Liban for the introduction of a new payment system for their customers. The central bank’s change requires the payment of 50 percent of the value of purchases in cash, and 50 percent through bank cards, on account of “low liquidity” in markets, according to Nabil Fahed, head of the Syndicate of Supermarket Owners. This development came the same day as gas station owners decided to stop accepting full payments for fuel via bank card. Dr. Jassem Ajaka, an economist, described the repercussions as “economically catastrophic, as long as the amount of banknotes in Lebanese pounds that a citizen can withdraw from banks is limited while prices are rising.” This situation, he claimed, would make people consume less, causing a decline in GDP and a larger contraction in the economy.

Charles Arbid, president of the Economic and Social Council, said that Lebanon “is experiencing inflationary depression: That is, consumption and economic movement are stalled.” Operational prices are also rising for sectors such as energy and transportation, developments which, he said, require the immediate launch of a three-dimensional participatory dialogue at government level with employers and workers to devise solutions and take action. He added: “No solutions are magical and readily available.” The Association of Banks in Lebanon, meanwhile, will pay the government-approved social assistance to public sector employees, including the military. This assistance is equivalent to half of an additional salary per month, with a minimum of 1.5 million Lebanese pounds ($993) and a maximum of 3 million pounds. Sixty percent of this is paid in cash, and other means of payment are being adopted to transfer the remaining 40 percent by bank card or check.

By MICHAEL TANCHUM -- thenationalnews.com -- As Russia's two-week-old war against Ukraine has brought Lebanon's wheat imports from the besieged Black Sea nation to a complete standstill, the government in Beirut is racing against the clock to avert a catastrophic food crisis. The conflict has set off a food security problem for many nations across the Middle East and North Africa – a region that relies on the Black Sea wheat-growing region as their bread basket – but Lebanon's situation is uniquely precarious. Its severe lack of storage capacity combined with its economic state of hyperinflation is to blame. The situation is dire, and in the absence of immediate financial assistance, a food system collapse could happen in a matter of weeks or even days.

Lebanon needs to import about 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat each month to cover the nation's demand for bread, and the government had relied on Ukraine to provide about two thirds of that wheat supply, amounting to more than 400,000 metric tonnes per year. Lebanon used to be able to store four months' worth of wheat reserves, but the August 2020 Beirut Port explosion destroyed the country's primary grain storage silos, removing 120,000 tonnes of storage capacity that has yet to be restored to this day. Lebanon's other major port in Tripoli has no grain storage capacity, leaving the country to fend with only a one month's storage by using warehouses owned by 12 mills.

by reuters — BEIRUT: A Lebanese prosecutor on Thursday issued travel bans against the heads of the boards of five Lebanese banks …