Exchange office sign in Beirut. (Credit: Joao Sousa / L'Orient Today)
The exchange rate displayed by Banque du Liban's Sayrafa platform was lowered late Monday afternoon to LL85,500 to the dollar, LL700 less than what it has been since June 5 (LL86,200).
BDL did not disclose the reasons for this adjustment, which comes at a time of significant — though not yet substantial — decline in the parallel market exchange rate.
According to the unofficial platforms Lirarate.org and Adde Dollar, this rate was between LL91,000 and LL91,500 to the dollar at the time Sayrafa was updated.
This has fallen by LL2,000 in just five days in an economy that has become dominated by cash.
The only clarification provided by the BDL is that the daily volume of transactions carried out at the Sayrafa rate reached $150 million, i.e. as much as on Tuesday June 27, the last working day before the al-Adha celebrations.
This amount is also within the average range recorded since June 5. BDL did not publish a breakdown of this number.
Although this platform has been set up in several stages since mid-June 2020, with the aim of making a foreign exchange market, its role and mechanisms remain poorly understood to this day.