Cellphone displaying promotional offers from one of the Lebanese operators. (Credit: Mario Doueiry/L'Orient-Le Jour)
BEIRUT — Caretaker Telecoms Minister Johnny Corm confirmed to L'Orient-Le Jour on Thursday that the government is indeed preparing a range of special offers for civil servants, as had been reported by several media outlets.
According to the caretaker minister, these will essentially be promotional offers (bundles) which will increase by 20 percent on average the quantity of data and messages, or call duration, available at a given rate. Only active civil servants will be eligible to benefit, Corm explained, adding that his ministry is waiting for the Civil Service Council to send him a full list of the staff concerned. He was unable to give a timetable for the activation of the new offers. He also indicated that the new tariffs for state-run telecoms provider Ogero have not yet been approved by the government. These rates are expected to multiply the current rates by an average of seven.
Long aligned with the longtime peg to the US dollar of LL1,507.5, telecom tariffs in lira were sharply increased on July 1 and have since been calculated using the exchange rate of the Banque du Liban's Sayrafa platform [LL86,200 to the US dollar at the last update.] In fact, this has led to a sharp rise in rates in lira — around 600 percent year-on-year — according to consumer price index data over the past several months.
At the same time, civil servants' salaries have been raised at a much slower rate to compensate for the lira's continued depreciation since the start of the economic crisis in 2019. This has led to a number of strikes, such as that of Électricité du Liban employees, which has been ongoing for the past 10 days. Civil servants are also seeking revised electricity rates. These rates were updated on Nov. 1 and represent a sharp increase on those previously in force.