Officially, the minimum wage remains 675,000 Lebanese pounds. Also, officially, this morning the canister of gasoline reached 463,000 pounds.
Today’s fuels recorded a remarkable increase. Gasoline 98 octane 473,000 pounds, an increase of 23 thousand pounds, 95 octane petrol 463,000 pounds, an increase of 22 thousand pounds, diesel Oil 489,000 pounds, an increase of 29 thousand pounds, and the price of a gas bottle became 311,000 pounds.
Despite the assurances of the representative of fuel distributors Fadi Abu Chakra about the start of the arrival of fuel ships that will relieve the Lebanese market next week, it remains just like morphine for the helpless citizen, and according to the sources of Sawt Beirut International: These are only false assurances.
The canister of gasoline rose in one year from 35 thousand pounds to 463,000 pounds, so what next?
The arrival of the gas canister price to what it is today was not a coincidence. Rather, there are several reasons behind this radical change.
The most prominent of these factors are the collapse of the exchange rate of the lira against the dollar, the Central Bank of Lebanon lifting the subsidy on the price of gasoline and the adoption of the exchange rate, the rise in the price of a barrel of oil globally from about $25 to $60 and today to more than $130 with the outbreak of the Russian war on Ukraine, a customs tax, an internal consumption fee, and a value-added tax on gasoline, in addition to the monopoly on the import of gasoline, which is confined to four main companies that control the price and impose it on the Ministry of Energy and Water to issue the official prices.
We look back, perhaps to the good old days, to show that, according to the International Information Corporation, the plate rose from March 2021 until March 2022 from 34,500 to 463,000 pounds, i.e. an increase of 428,500 pounds, or 1242%.
Since the start of the Ukrainian crisis at the end of February 2022 and until March 11, 2022, the price of a can of gasoline has risen from 362,000 pounds to 463,000 pounds, an increase of 28%.
The simple story of this rise began in the year 2021 with the rise in global prices and the collapse of the exchange rate of the lira against the dollar.
At that time, the Banque du Liban reduced the subsidy to 90%, provided that the owners of companies and stations would secure the 10% according to the market price, and this percentage gradually increased.
At the end of June 2021, the Banque du Liban decided to stop the subsidy and adopted a new mechanism based on lending the state dollars to purchase oil dues at the black market price.
Just as the price of gasoline changed more than a thousand percent within one year, so is the life of a citizen who no longer knows the taste of stability.
The Ministry of Industry has banned the export of a number of foodstuffs manufactured in Lebanon, except after obtaining a license issued by the Ministry of Industry and signed exclusively by the Minister of Industry authorizing the export, until further notice.
Among the goods whose export is prohibited are:
