A money changer in Beirut, September 2022. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
The Lebanese lira this weekend broke a new record, depreciating to an exchange rate of below LL44,000 to the US dollar on the parallel market, while the authorities have still not adopted reforms to curb the economic and financial collapse that has paralyzed Lebanon since 2019.
According to applications used to track the parallel market exchange rate, the greenback was worth LL44,200 to buy and LL44,100 to sell early on Sunday evening. The gap between this rate and that of the central bank's Sayrafa platform (LL30,800 on Friday evening), which was designed to try to stabilize the exchange rate, thus continues to widen, now amounting to a difference of more than LL13,000. The national currency has lost more than 96 percent of its value in three years of crisis.