A man holds wads of Lebanese lira at a Beirut exchange office on Jan. 19, 2023. (Credit: Mohammad Azakir/Reuters)
BEIRUT —The Lebanese lira recovered slightly on Tuesday afternoon, to around LL70,000 on the dollar, after reaching a new record low of LL74,000 earlier in the day.
The lira also recorded a sharp, rapid decrease on the parallel market on Monday.
According to the Lirarate.org platform, the dollar was buying at LL71,000 and selling at LL70,500 after 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
The gap between the parallel market rate and that of the Sayrafa platform (LL43,600) — designed by the Banque du Liban (BDL) to try to stabilize the exchange rate — continues to widen, now amounting to approximately LL27,000.
The latest fall follows a strike by Lebanese banks, announced last Tuesday, in protest of a judiciary decision against Fransabank.
The strike will continue until further notice, the Association of Banks in Lebanon reiterated on Tuesday following rumors it would lift the strike.
The Lebanese Court of Cassation ruled on a technicality that favored depositors Ayad al-Gharabaoui Ibrahim and his wife, Hanane Maroun al-Hajj Ibrahim, in their legal dispute with Fransabank. The case involves a few tens of thousands of dollars but has been highly publicized since last winter.
The Association of Banks in Lebanon said the strike demands the adoption of laws to regulate capital controls and lift banking secrecy— prerequisites set by the International Monetary Fund to release a much-needed financial aid package to Lebanon.
The lira's accelerated collapse of the past days also takes place two weeks after the official exchange rate was amended to t LL15,000 to the dollar, after decades of a fixed rate at LL1,507.5.
BDL has, on repeated occasions over the past three years, succeeded in slowing the pace of the lira’s depreciation, but it appears the maneuvers of the central bank lost their impact. This indicates that actors in the Lebanese economic scene have lost all confidence in the ruling class's ability to tackle the country’s problems, Marwan Barakat, head of research at Bank Audi, previously told L'Orient-Le Jour.
The national currency has lost more than 98 percent of its value over the last three years of economic crisis.