Beirut, (Business News Report)|| The Lebanese Council of Ministers is scheduled to discuss the issuance of larger denominations of the Lebanese lira, to facilitate the use of the local currency, which is suffering from a collapse in value.
The Governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, intends to ask the new Lebanese cabinet to obtain a law to issue larger denominations of the Lebanese lira to facilitate its use.
Lebanon intends to remove zeros from the currency, similar to what happened in Turkey.
Salameh confirmed that the Central Bank of Lebanon’s funds have decreased by $2.2 billion since the beginning of 2022, explaining that it was spent between supporting the dollar price and financing gasoline and the country’s needs.
He added: “The energy sector took from the Central Bank an amount of $24.537 billion in the period between 2010 and 2021.”
Regarding the people who had mocked him he said that the lira was “fine”, the central governor said: “My words were based on the policies that we were able to implement to attract dollars, as well as on a stock of dollars that exceeded $40 billion.”
He added, “With the help of officials in the Central Bank, I was able to secure stability and reassurance for the Lebanese over a period of 27 years. We were also able to implement several plans over the years, including the housing plan, which secured 175,000 homes.
“We were able to secure subsidized advances for the productive sectors, industrial, agricultural and tourism, and the tourism projects that exist to this day have benefited from loans and support secured by the Central Bank.
“When the crisis occurred in 2019, the price of the dollar did not rise much, and the Lebanese could withdraw their dollars from the banks, until the Lebanese government decided to stop paying bonds, and here inflation began, and the dollar began to rise.”
Salameh believe that the wrong decisions taken by the Lebanese state led to negative consequences for the economy, as well as to the financial crisis, and those who took these wrong decisions are the same ones who today blame the bank and its governor for the crisis.
