by NAJIA HOUSSARI - arabnews -- BEIRUT: Thousands of public and private-sector workers in Lebanon are expected to down tools next week in a national strike over crippling government spending cuts. Members of the country’s General Labor Union, which includes 43 unions and federations, will join a walkout on Wednesday in protest at the latest austerity measures. Union leader, Bechara Al-Asmar, told Arab News: “This national strike is the beginning of the broadest moves the country will witness against the removal of state subsidies for basic materials. “We are shouting in everyone’s face. We cannot stand by. If they (the country’s political leaders) form a government, there is no need to strike, but what is happening is further deterioration. “The poverty rate in Lebanon, according to international statistics, has reached 75 percent, and these people receive 1 million (Lebanese) pounds ($660), which is no longer sufficient to pay an electricity bill, while the extreme poverty rate has risen to 40 percent. “In the tourism sector alone, the total number of people who have lost their jobs has reached 110,000, and if banks implement the Central Bank’s circular for merging, 10,000 employees will become unemployed and there will be no job opportunities for them in light of the closure of other institutions,” Al-Asmar said.

There were angry street protests in Sidon following an announcement by Ali Ibrahim, head of the Union of Bakeries Syndicates, that the state had stopped subsidizing flour. Demonstrators blocked main roads and in Hermel tires were set alight outside the government palace. One protester told Arab News: “I used to buy a thyme pie (a cheap popular food) for 1,000 Lebanese pounds. Today, after announcing the lifting of subsidies, they went up to 2,500 pounds. How can the poor survive? What awaits us next?” During a press conference, Shadi Al-Sayed, head of the Public Drivers Syndicate in northern Lebanon, said: “The spark of anger will be from Tripoli if the ruling authority in Lebanon decides to kill the citizen in his livelihood.” He warned of street protests until “matters returned to normal.”

by middleeastmonitor.com — Lebanon’s central bank asked domestic banks on Wednesday to comply with a new law allowing students abroad to transfer …

Al Jazeera -- Timour Azhari -- Beirut – Lebanon’s prestigious American University of Beirut (AUB) has announced that it will more than double the cost of tuition in the local currency, saying the move was necessitated by the country’s spiralling economic collapse. The university will adopt an exchange rate of 3,900 Lebanese pounds to the US dollar, officially untethering from Lebanon’s 23-year-old official rate of 1,500 Lebanese pounds per dollar. AUB President Fadlo Khuri said the university had made the decision in June but held off in the hope that Lebanon’s leaders would implement reforms to unlock international aid that could stabilise the country’s currency, which has lost about 80 percent of its value since mid- 2019. “We delayed it as far as we can, hoping for an economic rescue of Lebanon as a country and some kind of sustainable plan … clearly that’s not imminent,” Khuri said in a briefing with journalists on Monday.

The new rate mirrors one of Lebanon’s three main exchange rates; a semi-official one set by the central bank for commercial bank transactions. At the official rate, yearly tuition of approximately $24,000 equated to 36 million pounds. When the new rate goes into force this spring, it becomes 93.6 million pounds. The minimum wage in Lebanon is just 675,000 pounds a month, or 8.1 million per year. That renders AUB inaccessible to the vast majority of youth in a country where more than 50 percent are poor, and casts uncertainty over the ability of thousands of students, many formerly considered middle class, to complete their studies at one of the Middle East’s top universities. Even before the tuition hike, Khuri said 250 of some 9,400 students at the university had halted their studies, while 600 incoming students had ultimately decided not to start. AUB expects more to leave now, but does not know how many, Khuri said.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s caretaker government agreed on Tuesday that subsidies on bread and essential medicine should be kept, as the country’s financial meltdown sends poverty and inflation soaring. At a meeting on subsidy rationing with the central bank governor and an advisor to the president, ministers pledged to draft a plan within a week that would help cut spending while keeping support for some basic goods. With foreign reserves dwindling fast and an end to subsidies looming, Lebanon’s leaders have yet to make any substantive moves towards a plan to back imports or help the country’s most vulnerable. Politicians have bickered for months over the formation of a new government as Lebanon hurtles towards what U.N. agencies have warned will be “a social catastrophe”. A statement from Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab’s office said attendees had agreed at Tuesday’s meeting to study means for reducing the oil bill and providing ration cards. The crisis has already doomed at least half the population to poverty.

A COVID-19 surge and the huge blast at Beirut port, which killed 200 people in August and prompted the cabinet to resign, have piled hardship on the Lebanese. Comments about the removal of subsidies have triggered panic buying in recent months, raising fears of food shortages and growing hunger. Governor Riad Salameh said last week the central bank could only keep subsidies for two more months. As dollar inflows dried up, the central bank has drawn on already critical foreign reserves to subsidise three key commodities - wheat, fuel and medicine - and a basket of basic goods. The central bank has provided hard currency to those importers at the old peg of 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the dollar as the currency crashed by nearly 80% since last year. Critics, including the World Bank last week, have blamed the ruling elite for failing to chart a path out of the crisis since it erupted more than a year ago.