In light of the burdens weighing heavily on citizens, the dollar has returned to fray the nerves of the Lebanese people with its fluctuating prices in the black market due to a series of complex and interconnected factors, chief among them the political crisis, presidential vacancy, and lack of trust in the reform process hampered by the ruling class. The exchange rate of the dollar exceeded for the first time yesterday morning the threshold of forty thousand Lebanese Lira before retreating to 39,600 Lira by evening. Various analyses and predictions have emerged regarding the reasons for this sudden rise following the circular issued by the Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, Riad Salameh, which previously helped curb the rise in the exchange rate after he announced a halt to purchasing dollars while continuing to sell them.
Financial sources noted that the resumption of the dollar's upward trajectory "destroys all the environment that was preparing for its reduction to less than 35,000 Lira as a preliminary step toward aligning its price in the market with the rate of the Sayrafa platform, as an initial step toward unifying the exchange rates, particularly concerning bank withdrawals, aiming to reach a later stage of liberating the exchange rate in response to the demands of the International Monetary Fund." Regarding the reasons for the recent rise in the dollar's price, they indicated that the causes cannot be limited to a specific reason, merely raising "question marks" in this context: "Is this issue solely related to supply and demand, or was it a deliberate reaction to Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab dismissing the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank from a joint committee meeting and calling for the Governor to be summoned instead... or has the Central Bank secretly resumed purchasing dollars contrary to its public announcement of only selling?"
