BDL promises to provide dollars to fuel importers at LL22,200

BEIRUT — As most gas stations remained closed on Friday, with long lines forming at the few that were filling up, Banque du Liban announced that it would provide dollars to fuel importers at an exchange rate of LL22,200 through March 29, regardless of fluctuations in the market rate or of BDL’s Sayrafa rate.

Here’s what we know:

    • The central bank’s announcement comes on the second day of a strike announced by gas station owners, who said that they were being squeezed by fuel distributors demanding to be paid in “fresh dollars.”

    • The fuel distributors, for their part, asserted that BDL had stopped giving them access to 85 percent of dollars for imports at the Sayrafa rate, as it had previously done. The Sayrafa rate was set at LL22,150 per dollar as of Thursday, compared to the parallel market rate of LL25,000.

    • BDL on Friday promised to sell importers 100 percent of the dollars needed for imports at LL22,200, regardless of the Sayrafa rate.

    • The central bank also said it would provide unlimited dollars to banks to change at the Sayrafa rate.

    • Georges Brax, spokesman for the gas station owners' syndicate, had said Thursday that BDL would subsidize 100 percent of fuel imports at the Sayrafa rate. He added that Energy Minister Walid Fayad had spoken with BDL Governor Riad Salameh, asking him to "maintain a mechanism for subsidizing fuel imports for two months," which would leave the newly announced measures in place until mid-May, coinciding with Lebanon's May 15 parliamentary elections.

    • Fayad on Friday reiterated “the companies' commitment to deliver fuels to distributors and stations according to the official price.”