BEIRUT — Lebanon’s main bank raised its staying aids on fuel on Monday, gas station owners stated, ending a year-long procedure of scaling back on the pricey program.
The Central Bank over a year ago revealed it would slowly lift fuel aids, to sluggish down the drainingpipes of its foreign exchange reserves. Fuel aids when expense the cash-strapped nation some $3 billion everyyear. Last week, it subsidized simply 20% of the expense of fuel imports.
Lebanon is in the throes of a debilitating financial crisis that has plunged three-quarters of its population into hardship and annihilated the worth of the Lebanese pound versus the dollar by around 90 percent. The World Bank hasactually explained the collapse as one of the worst in the world in the last 150 years.
Now, gas station owners will rate fuel at the nation’s “parallel market rate” — likewise understood as the black market rate, Gas Station Owners’ Syndicate representative George Brax informed The Associated Press.
The regional currency is still formally pegged at 1,500 Lebanese pounds to the U.S. dollar, however now tra