A money changer counts notes at his shop in Beirut on Sept. 22, 2022. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — The Lebanese lira on Thursday reached an all time low of LL42,000 to the US dollar on the parallel market.
According to the Lirarate.org platform, exchangers were buying dollars at LL42,000 and selling them at LL41,900 at 9:30 a.m. The gap between this rate and that of the Sayrafa platform (LL30,300 on Wednesday night), designed by the Banque du Liban to try to stabilize the exchange rate, continues to widen, now amounting to a difference of over LL11,000.
At the end of November, caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil revealed that he had sent a note to the central bank asking it to calculate, as of Dec. 1, customs duties in Lebanese lira using an exchange rate of LL15,000 to the dollar, instead of the official peg of LL1,507.5, which is technically still in force.
The depreciation of the national currency, which has lost more than 96 percent of its value in three years, has plunged more than three quarters of the Lebanese below the poverty line, according to the UN. It comes despite a preliminary agreement between Beirut and the International Monetary Fund, which called for the introduction of a floating exchange rate. The agreement also included additional reforms that the Lebanese government needs to implement in order to unlock a financial rescue package.