Lebanese set fire to banks after rising dollar and freezing of their savings

Dozens of people demonstrated this Thursday in Beirut and burned at least two banks in protest of a new plummet Lebanese poundwhich has registered this Thursday 80,000 units per dollar on the black market, official sources reported.

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These fires occurred after protesters burned tires in front of the Fransabank bank in the wealthy Badaro neighborhood of the Lebanese capital, according to the Lebanese news agency ANN and local media.

“Beirut City Firefighters They have recently managed to extinguish the fire that has broken out in two banks in the city, Bank Audi and Fransabank, after teams intervened to control the fire and prevent it from spreading to the rest of the building and nearby properties,” according to a Beirut City Hall statement collected by ANN.

The This Thursday, local currency pulverized its record downwards against the dollar when it was exchanged on the black market at 80,000 units per dollar, after on Tuesday it already registered another record when it reached the mark of 70,000 pounds per dollar.

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The Central Bank of Lebanon applied at the beginning of the month an increase of 895% to the official exchange rate of the Lebanese pound, which goes from 1,507.5 units per dollar to 15,000 per US bill, in the first increase announced by the issuing entity in more than three decades.

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The unbridled fall of the country’s currency of the cedars, which started together with a deep economic crisis at the end of 2019, has deepened in the last two months.

Currently, the exchange rate on the black market is what determines the prices of almost everything in Lebanon and the official one has very few usesdue to the enormous gap created between the two since the crisis began in 2019, when both were even.

EFE