Motorists line up outside a gas station in Hamra. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — Fuel subsidies will be removed within days, spokesperson for the gas station owners’ syndicate Georges Brax said Tuesday during an interview with the Voix du Liban radio station.
Here's what we know:
• “The fuel subsidies will be removed in a few days and we are moving towards a 20 liter container priced between 300,000 and 350,000 Lebanese lira,” Brax told VDL, adding that the decision is presently being discussed by the Energy Ministry and Banque du Liban.
• At the end of August, Lebanese officials announced a partial removal of fuel subsidies by the central bank, saying that fuel would be subsidized at a rate of LL8,000 to the dollar until the end of September. Fuel had previously been subsidized a LL3,900 to the dollar since June, and prior to that at LL1,500 to the dollar.
• When contacted by L'Orient Today, a spokesperson for BDL declined to comment on when the central bank would end fuel subsidies.
• For months now gasoline and diesel shortages — blamed by importers on tardy payments to suppliers on the part of the central bank and by BDL and the Energy Ministry on the hoarding and smuggling of subsidized fuel — have wreaked havoc on movement and the electricity supply in Lebanon, and increasingly led to heighten tensions amid hourslong queues at gas stations across the country.