Friday, 12 June _Lebanon’s cabinet has held an emergency meeting in the wake of angry protests spurred by a considerable plunge of the national currency, which has made the worst recession in decades.
The country has been facing an economic downturn since last autumn. The Lebanese pound, which has continued to plummet against the US dollar, hit a new low on Thursday, going down about 70 percent from its official rate.
The worst economic turmoil since the 1975-1990 civil war has seen widespread layoffs and pay cuts that have put 45 percent of the population into poverty.
Despite previous efforts to control the currency depreciation, the Lebanese media reported that the currency sold for more than 6,000 per dollar on Friday on the black market, down from 4,000 in recent days. The pound had maintained a fixed rate of 1,500 to the dollar for nearly 30 years.
A new wave of protests erupted across Lebanon on Thursday after protesters took to the streets, setting tires on fire and blocking roads including in the capital Beirut.
Prime Minister Hassan Diab chaired the ‘urgent’ cabinet meeting on Friday, which was also attended by the Central Bank governor Riad Salame and representatives of the banking association and money changing syndicate, the National News Agency said.
Mahmoud Halawa, head of the money changers union, said the Central Bank had agreed to ‘inject’ a sufficient amount of dollars into the market for importers and regular citizens in a bid to reverse the decline in the pound's unofficial exchange rate.
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