Reports: IMF Asks Lebanon to Peg Dollar at LBP 1,750 or 2,000
An International Monetary Fund delegation wraps up Sunday a three-day visit to Lebanon during which it met with senior political and financial officials.
“The delegation stressed that the starting point for the solutions should be reforms, topped by the electricity file,” media reports said.
“The delegation also asked Lebanese officials to unify the dollar exchange rate and end the discrepancy between the official rate and the rate at money exchange shops,” the reports added.
“There is an inclination to agree on a rate ranging between LBP 1,750 and 2,000, seeing as that would relieve the people, specifically depositors,” the reports said.
23 February 2020, 15:31
03
This is a fake report prepared by the 'Strong' presidency. The IMF never ever recommends pegging any currency to another! It almost always recommends freeing the currency from any artificial pegs imposed by incompetent governments.
23 February 2020, 18:10
00
Not sure why everyone wants the LL. Since all prices for everything is quoted in USD, why don't BDL take the necessary steps to completely make the USD the official currency and withdraw all LL from circulation. Ask Ecuador. They did it.
Reform reform reform. Size of bureacracy and government MUST be cut down.
Dismantle the other mafia that are the unregulated Exchange shops. They manipulate the currency in my opine and drive it up and down.
As Milton Friendman once said and I am paraphrasing here - "You can take a bunch of bureaucrats to the desert and somehow they will manage to reduce the amount of sand"
23 February 2020, 18:10
00
Not sure why everyone wants the LL. Since all prices for everything is quoted in USD, why don't BDL take the necessary steps to completely make the USD the official currency and withdraw all LL from circulation. Ask Ecuador. They did it.
Reform reform reform. Size of bureacracy and government MUST be cut down.
Dismantle the other mafia that are the unregulated Exchange shops. They manipulate the currency in my opine and drive it up and down.
As Milton Friendman once said and I am paraphrasing here - "You can take a bunch of bureaucrats to the desert and somehow they will manage to reduce the amount of sand"
23 February 2020, 20:04
00
Should be between 2000 and 2500. Moving it to 1750 wouldn't do anything and would not address the difference between the exchange shops and the official rate. But, most importantly, government must be completely reformed on how it does things and ministers, MP's and former ministers and mps should not be getting paid while these reforms are going through since they are the ones that got us in this mess in the first place.
23 February 2020, 20:56
00
it should stay 1500... otherwise the salaries will be cut dramatically!
24 February 2020, 07:16
01
Cut the size of government/employees by half and pay the rest 25% more.
24 February 2020, 12:08
00
I don't disagree, but there is no way that the government can support the dollar at 1500, and seeing the rarity of dollars in this market sort of makes it worse. In any case, salary purchasing power has already dropped some 40% according to some estimates, so devaluing the lira right now is really not doing anything.
Also does makes exports cheaper (so should raise demand), but then again, what are we exporting again?
