Saad Hariri presented a draft cabinet lineup of 18 ministers to Michel Aoun. The prime minister-designate claimed afterward that the names were chosen based on “specialization, competence and without partisan affiliation.” He added that the president had promised that he would study the list. Despite Hariri’s upbeat words, sources told our sister publication L’Orient-Le Jour that Aoun is not prepared to rubber-stamp Hariri’s lineup. Today marks seven weeks since Hariri was chosen to form a government, and four months since the previous government resigned.

Caretaker Health Minister Hamad Hassan said subsidies will not be removed from medications for chronic illnesses. Policymakers are scrambling to plan for the depletion of the central bank’s dollar reserves, at which point subsidies on essential goods — including medicine, fuel and wheat — would end. The head of the Syndicate of Generator Owners, Abdo Saadeh, warned that removing subsidies on diesel would hike the price of 5-ampere generator service to LL500,000 per month. To reduce the country’s reliance on imported medicine, the head of the Syndicate of Pharmaceutical Industries, Carole Abikaram, urged the central bank to expedite the settling of pharmaceutical factories’ invoices for imported inputs.

Banque du Liban asked banks to comply with a law requiring them to transfer foreign currency to students abroad upon request. In a circular, the central bank said banks should use dollars at correspondent banks abroad to complete the transactions; however, banks as a whole have a net negative position abroad, meaning they are short on foreign currency. It has been two months since Parliament passed the law allowing parents of students in foreign universities to transfer up to $10,000 at the official exchange rate. Families have resorted to courts and the street to force banks to follow the law.

The Lebanese American University effectively hiked tuition by 160 percent. The move follows a similar announcement that the American University of Beirut would begin charging students at a rate of LL3,900 to the dollar instead of the official LL1,515 after the new year. While tuition is priced in dollars at the institutions, the vast majority of students pay in the national currency. Scores of students and supporters are set to protest at noon today at LAU’s lower gate in Beirut and in front of the Byblos campus’ main gate.

COVID-19 vaccines will be free of charge once they arrive in Lebanon, the caretaker health minister announced. In comments to the media yesterday, Hamad Hassan said that authorities were moving forward on logistical plans for immunization against the virus, including securing money for a down payment with Pfizer ahead of reaching an expected agreement with the pharmaceutical giant on Saturday. Hassan also said that 20 centers across the country will be equipped with special refrigerators to store the COVID-19 vaccines. Twenty more people died from the virus yesterday, bringing the death toll to 1,156. Firass Abiad, the head of Rafik Hariri University Hospital, tweeted that new patients are “still facing difficulty in finding a hospital ICU bed despite the recent increase in hospital capacity.”