BEIRUT — Lebanon's parliament on Wednesday
approved cash payments for
poor families, to cost $556 million a year, planned
as a step that would allow the curbing of a $6 billion subsidy program for
basic goods.
اضافة اعلان
Every family eligible for the program would receive around
$93 a month, according to a source close to the government.
Lebanon is battling a deep financial crisis, dubbed by the
World Bank as one of the worst depressions of modern history.
The government introduced a subsidy program last year to
finance the import of basic goods such as wheat, fuel and medicine through
drawing down on foreign reserves.
But shortages of essential items such as medicine and fuel
have worsened in the past month as the central bank ran short of funds to
finance the program.
Some hospitals have been postponing elective surgeries to
save on vital medical supplies such as anesthetics, and fuel shortages have
forced motorists to queue for hours to get barely any gasoline.
The government last week effectively cut fuel subsidies by
using a weaker exchange rate of the Lebanese pound to the dollar to finance new
imports through the central bank's mandatory reserves.
Foreign reserves
The central bank had asked the government to provide it with
the correct legal permission to dip into its mandatory reserves, an indication
that it has all but run out of foreign reserves.
Mandatory reserves — hard currency deposits parked by local
lenders at the central bank - represent a percentage of customer deposits and
are usually not drawn upon other than in exceptional circumstances.
The parliament also instructed the government on Wednesday
to issue approval for exceptional credit to finance the cash subsidy program,
indicating that too would be funded through the central bank's mandatory
reserves, according to a member of parliament who asked not to be identified.
Lebanon's crisis has propelled more than half of the
population into poverty, with the currency losing more than 90 percent of its
value in around two years.
Frustration has been spilling on to the streets in the past
week, with some armed protesters in the north of Lebanon scuffling with the
army on Wednesday.
A crowd in Tripoli, Lebanon's poorest city, fired gunshots
into the air when the army tried to contain their gathering, a security source
said.
No one was wounded in the incident, but the army had to
withdraw from the street where the incident occurred temporarily and armed
protesters roamed the nearby areas, sometimes forcing shops to close, until
they withdrew from the streets later on, the source said.
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