Ninety percent of Lebanon’s consumption depends on imports.

While the state used to collect customs duties and taxes on value-added or imported goods on the basis of one thousand five hundred Lebanese pounds, today we are facing a radical change in prices in the event of raising the value of the customs dollar according to the exchange rate, which is currently around 21 thousand pounds.

Customs duties imposed on imported goods range is valued from 5% up to 40% compared to the value of the commodity, and vary according to the quality of the commodity as well, while the value of tva is limited to 11%.

So, basically, the increases to the original price of each product imported from abroad will range between 10 and 15 up to 45%, according to Mohamed Shams El-Din, a researcher at the International Information Company.

According to him, the state also estimates that customs duties, whose value in 2021 was 471 billion pounds, will rise to three thousand and 382 billion pounds, but the largest tax will be on the value-added tax, whose revenues were estimated in 2021 at 2404 billion pounds to become 12 thousand and 575 billion pounds.

For example:

• The phone, which price was 10 million and 500 thousand pounds, will become about 12 million and 600 thousand pounds.
• The car, which was priced at 200 million pounds, will reach 290 million pounds.
• The computer, which was priced at 10 million pounds, will become 11 million pounds at the new price, despite the tax exemption.
• The perfume, which was priced at one million pounds, will later be priced at one million and 250 thousand pounds.
• As for the furniture: if the piece is worth 21 million pounds, it will become about 31 million pounds.

As for the food commodities most affected by the customs dollar, we mention, for example:

• Potatoes will rise to about 5,367,000 pounds per ton.
• Coffee will rise about one million and 998 thousand pounds per ton.
• A ton of rice will also rise to about 749,000 pounds.

Finally, the price of gasoline until this moment is not known if it will be affected by customs duties.

According to the director of the General Assembly of the Oil Importing Companies Association, Maroun Shammas, the customs dollar for oil commodities is different from the customs duty imposed on other commodities.

Many questions revolve around the prices of all imported goods, and in all cases, may God help the Lebanese people.