The Central Bank is insisting on lifting subsidies while officials and the ruling class insist on keeping subsidies on fuel. Amid these two stances Lebanese are being humiliated to secure the remaining stored and not smuggled gasoline and diesel at the subsidized price.

Companies refuse to deliver fuel before the Ministry of Energy determines the mechanism for setting the new prices. This mechanism depends on the legislation to use the mandatory reserve to continue support, through the parliament’s approval of such a law, or the acceptance of the Central Bank’s decision to lift subsidies.

It is worth noting that legislating using the mandatory reserve will return us to the same scenario after a year and a half. The country will then be without reserves, and perhaps without gold.

Central Bank sources confirmed to Sawt Beirut International (SBI) that the Central Bank rejects using the reserves without a law that allows and legitimates doing this. It also does not welcome using this reserve for supporting fuel, because this mechanism is benefiting only smuggling mafias and merchants. The Central Bank hopes instead, to form a government that would apply reforms to save the Lebanese.

The sources indicated that the country needs every remaining dollar to prepare an integrated plan for revival. It considered that what is happening is a waste of time, especially that people are suffering from the absence of the minimum life necessities such as electricity, medicine, fuel and bread.

Until the officials decide which solution they will adopt, outages in diesel and gasoline, in addition to electricity, bread, medicine, telecommunications, and others, will remain.

Hospitals will remain either closed or on the brink of closing, in addition to hundreds of commercial establishments that have closed their doors due to fuel outages. The country will remain in a state of complete paralysis until the conscience of the rulers awakens.

So, brace for a massive collapse in the coming period!

In the same context, the Food Importers Syndicate made a distress call, appealing to officials to speed up the sector’s rescue and supply it with the gasoline and diesel required to ensure work continuity.

The companies’ fuel stocks are only sufficient for a few days, and the food security of the Lebanese has become at risk as a result of these internal factors, and not for external reasons related to the inability to import.