Two severe blows have been received by the Lebanese citizen in the past few days. The first is the Bank of Lebanon’s raising of the price of the dollar approved on the exchange platform to 70,000 pounds, and the second is due to the decision of the Minister of Finance to adopt a price of 45,000 pounds for the customs dollar instead of 15,000 pounds.
Whatever the form and mechanism for implementing these two decisions, their repercussions will eventually fall on the shoulders of the Lebanese citizen, whether through electricity and communications bills or through taxes and fees that accumulate on consumer goods and affect them directly.
Salary collapse
Before entering into “bulging” and “inflation” of bills due to the decisions of the Governor of the Banque du Liban and the Minister of Finance, it is necessary to point out the decline in the value of salaries in Lebanon due to the collapse of the value of the national currency and its loss of more than 98 percent of its previous value (by calculating an average exchange rate of 80 dollars). thousand pounds).
As for salaries, they have lost their value dramatically, so that the salaries of public sector employees now range between $50 and $150 only. About $200 a month.
The collapse of the value of salaries and incomes automatically reduces the ability of citizens to pay electricity and communications bills, which increased due to the raising of the dollar exchange platform, and also hinders the efforts of families to secure their daily living, following their complete inability to obtain hospital, medical and education services.
The Banque du Liban’s decision to double the price of a dollar on an exchange platform and raise it to 70,000 pounds is nothing but a clear indication, albeit in an unannounced manner, that the black market dollar has entered a new phase, titled by its continuous rise and its approach to breaking the ceiling of 100 pounds.
New taxes and fees
The decision to raise the exchange platform dollar coincided with the start of the Electricité du Liban Corporation to collect its first invoices on the basis of the new tariff linked to the price of the exchange platform dollar. This is not a coincidence, but rather a deliberate decision aimed at raising the value of the revenues of the Electricité du Liban Corporation, which sold citizens fish in the sea. It promised to raise feeding hours to 8 and 10 hours in return for raising the electricity tariff, but it did not fulfill its promises.
And because Lebanon’s electricity supply was limited to only two to four hours, citizens were unable to dispense with the alternative energy source, which is the participation of electric generators, which will require them to pay two dollar electricity bills. This may prompt many citizens to separate electricity meters from their homes until the number of feeding hours increases in a way that allows them to suspend the subscriptions of private generators.
And despite the low cost of the kilowatt-hour belonging to the Electricité du Liban compared to its cost approved for private generators, the official “dollarized” electricity bill will be very expensive and will reach, according to expectations, millions of pounds despite the diminishing hours of feeding, and the reason is that the monthly electricity subscription fees in dollars exceed Its value is the volume of spending that does not exceed 4 hours per day. The bills will also be paid on the basis of the exchange platform price, which today is 70,000 pounds, and is expected to rise later.
Telecom and Internet bills will not be in a better condition than electricity, as they are also dollarized on the basis of a dollar exchange platform, which jumped to 70,000 pounds. Accordingly, the cost of telecom bills, prepaid cell phone cards, and others has doubled. The card, which used to cost 600,000 pounds, for example, is now around 1,100,000 pounds.
Traders rule the market
As for the decision of the Minister of Finance to raise the value of the customs dollar from 15,000 pounds to 45,000 pounds, coinciding with the decision of the Minister of Economy to dollarize the prices of consumer goods, it made the Lebanese consumer a hostage to the merchants’ already lost mercy. While merchants insist on their commitment to the principle of pricing in “fresh” dollars for goods, taking into account the value of the customs dollar at 45,000 pounds, a source from the Ministry of Economy, who has reservations regarding the minister’s decision, confirms that merchants price their products in “fresh” dollars as a total value, meaning that fees and taxes are included in the price of the commodity on the basis of The “Fresh” dollar.
This is added to the observations of many citizens of how supermarkets price commodities in dollars, and prices increase on a daily basis with the decline in the exchange rate of the dollar on the black market. Today, merchants use the excuse of raising the customs dollar, arbitrarily increasing the prices of commodities, which explains the differences in commodity prices between one shop and another and between one region and another.
As a result, the price of the exchange platform dollar and the customs dollar rose, and with them all bills and living costs rose, and the prices of all goods and services in the country were dollarized in light of the loose pricing and its submission to the moods of merchants only amid the complete absence of any control efforts on the markets.
Traders’ talk regarding the stability of the prices of commodities that are exempt from the customs dollar (such as rice, sugar, grains, oil, etc.) is nothing but nonsense and hypocrisy, which is proven by the prices of the mentioned products on store shelves.
