It was stated in “Nidaa al-Watan”:
What the citizens feared most would be achieved: the complete removal of fuel subsidies. Yesterday, the importing companies were informed by the Banque du Liban of the need to insure the price of 100 percent gasoline in fresh dollars, following they had paid 15 percent in dollars, and the rest was paid in pounds at the price of an exchange platform. The new turn confused those concerned in the sector, as “distributors will be unable to secure the dollars to purchase the material from companies unless the stations pay in dollars,” according to the representative of fuel distributors, Fadi Abu Shakra. And “the stations will be obligated to sell in dollars, otherwise the material will not be available in the market.”
The move to completely remove fuel subsidies was expected, but the contacts that accelerated during the last hours returned to “brake” this step in the evening, so it was decided to postpone the “dollarization” of the price of the gas can in full at the present time, but it is “inevitably coming even following a while,” according to sources. concerned with the sector, calling for the preparation of the necessary ground for it before it occurs, “it is illogical to liberalize the prices of gasoline and diesel and the rest of the oil derivatives before liberalizing the exchange rate, since in light of the sharp fluctuations that the exchange rate witnesses daily, up or down at a value of up to 5000 pounds, it is impossible to That companies, distributors and stations accept selling in other than the dollar, which keeps the crisis open to all possibilities, not least the danger of the return of queues and queuing for hours in front of the stations.” As for the second point that the sources stress on, it is “no less important than the liberalization of the exchange rate to ensure stability in the hydrocarbon market, and it is represented in lifting the heavy hand of the Ministry of Energy from the market. Many of the costs incurred by workers in the sector, including a 2% commission on depositing cash in banks.
Accordingly, “liberating the exchange rate, ending the heresy of the price-fixing schedule, and launching the reforms required to control the collapse, remain complementary and necessary steps to lift the total support for the hydrocarbon sector, otherwise the result will be catastrophic,” because the damages of solutions “on the piece” are It is immeasurably more dangerous than the repercussions of the crisis itself, and the comprehensive solution remains the only entrance to the radical treatments of all the country’s problems.
