BEIRUT (Reuters) by Lisa Barrington and Ellen Francis -- Cars line up to fill their tanks but the worker at the gas station in Lebanon’s capital city waves them off, standing by the ‘Strike!’ signs. “No fuel today,” he shouts. The day of industrial action, replicated at petrol pumps across the country, was not really about fuel, it was about the dollars needed to pay for it, or rather the lack of them. “We don’t want a crisis ... the sector is bleeding,” said Fadi Abu Chakra, a spokesman for fuel distributors who led the strike this week. “We (get paid) in Lebanese pounds, and we need dollars to pay importers. Where are we supposed to get dollars if the banks are not giving them?”

A stagnant local economy and a slowdown in cash injections from Lebanese abroad have reduced the central bank’s foreign currency reserves, making it difficult for businesses to buy the dollars they need from banks. Some say they are being forced to go to money exchange houses which charge rates above the official peg of 1,507.5 pounds to the dollar. Lebanon has not seen such financial strains since its 1975-1990 civil war. The steady pressure has raised concerns for the stability of a country where political tensions - local and regional - are never far from the surface, and which hosts around a million Syrian refugees.

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