Dollars are now selling for more than LL19,000 on the parallel exchange market. (Credit: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)
BEIRUT — The lira’s value continued its nosedive on Friday, with money exchangers buying and selling US dollars for more than LL19,000.
Speaking with L’Orient Today, several exchangers variously reported buying dollars for rates ranging from LL19,050 to LL19,275, and selling dollars for LL19,050–LL19,400. At least one online application set the buy and sell rates at LL19,450 and LL19,500, respectively.
The lira-to-dollar exchange rate had broken LL18,000 to $1 just two days before, falling to more than LL18,500 to $1 on Thursday before crossing the LL19,000 on Friday. Friday’s milestone means that the lira has now lost some 93 percent of its value since coming untethered from the official peg of LL1,507.5 to $1 in mid-2019.
The rapid depreciation comes as rumors abound that Premier-designate Saad Hariri is preparing to step down from his post after he and President Michel Aoun have, for the better part of a year, failed to agree on the makeup of a cabinet.
Meanwhile, unemployment and inflation are soaring, and payments for subsidized goods are backlogged at Banque du Liban, whose foreign currency reserves have hit a critical threshold, leading to shortages of fuel, electricity and medicine. A month’s worth of main meals for a family of five now costs three times the national minimum wage, a report released earlier this week by the American University of Beirut’s Crisis Observatory has found.
At the same time, donor countries and institutions have made their assistance contingent upon structural reforms, in some cases rebuking Lebanese officials’ attempts to skirt responsibility for the crisis and plead for aid.