It is no longer necessary to assess and determine the Lebanese pound against the US dollar. Today, the numbers have surpassed a thousand percent, and the factors are probably well-known to everyone: the Banque du Liban circulars transferring deposits from dollars to Lebanese pounds after banks withheld dollar deposits from clients under the guise that the Lebanese state had acquired obligations owed to banks. As a result, after the money is returned to the banks by the Lebanese government, the banks will restore the dollar money to the depositors. In this regard, Dr. Bassem Al Bawab, an economic specialist, spoke to Mahasen Morsal, Sawt Beirut International’s reporter, on the surge in the dollar exchange rate.

Al-Bawab explained: “The Lebanese were astonished by President Saad Hariri’s apologies for the formation, as they anticipated him to continue the mission. As a result, the dollar climbed by 3,000 pounds. In fact, the true cost should not exceed ten thousand pounds.”

As Al-Bawab stated, we can not guarantee trust in the Lebanese pound. Therefore, people are converting their funds in LBP to dollars. “The worry of people who convert their money into dollars is less than the fear of people who pump dollars into the market via expatriates, and the danger is not in the dollars that are being transferred, but rather in the checks that are turned into cash,” he explained. Here is the disaster: the monetary dollar has become a source of trade, raising the dollar’s price to six figures, despite the fact that “there is no deficit in the trade balance presently.”

“This is not the genuine economy,” Al-Bawab said, “and once the cabinet is established, the exchange rate will reflect this within days, not months, and the dollar will stabilize at the correct rate.”

In July of last year, Bank of America predicted that the dollar exchange rate would reach 46,500 Lebanese pounds by the end of 2020, but this did not happen, and now some experts predict that the dollar will exceed 50,000 pounds by the end of this year. Will the situation alter, and all expectations fall?