Though Lebanon tolerates petrol stations' accepting payment in US currency, setting petrol pumps in dollars is against the law. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
BEIRUT — Lebanon's Energy and Water said in a statement Friday that fuel stations across Lebanon can charge their customers in dollars, according to the official rate in the ministry’s online application.
The ministry statement asks gas station employees to “abide by the measures taken to allow citizens to choose if they want to pay in Lebanese lira or in [US] dollars.” If the customer prefers the second option, the gas station must calculate the amount due based on “the exchange rate set in the ministry's “tarification” [sic] and published on the mobile application.”
The statement noted that the amount can be paid with dollars even “without the ministry having to publish a tariff in dollars.”
The Director General of the Ministry of Economy and Trade, Mohammad Abou Haidar, last week summoned representatives of the fuel sector to inform them of “complaints from disgruntled citizens.”
The senior official informed his interlocutors that, though the ministry of energy tolerates petrol stations' accepting payment in US currency, setting petrol pumps in dollars was not permitted by law, and that service stations that use it risked being fined. He called on the caretaker Minister of Energy and Water Walid Fayad to publish a decision explicitly resolving the issue.
Today, almost all merchants are authorized, expressly or tacitly, to display their prices in dollars but they cannot refuse payment in lira as calculated at the market rate, which for more than a month has been stable at around LL95,000 to the US dollar.
This obligation has been widely questioned since the collapse of Lebanon's national currency began in 2019 and its high volatility on the foreign exchange market since Banque du Liban is no longer able to stabilize its parity against the dollar.