The Daily Star newspaper indicates that the governor of the Banque du Liban would have refused to continue the subsidy program for the purchase of basic necessities requiring the outgoing government to put in place a plan to restructure it with the introduction of prepaid cards for the most vulnerable people. Riad Salamé would have thus informed the outgoing Minister of Finance Ghazi Wazni.
Also Riad Salamé would have informed the outgoing government that he would only have 1.5 billion dollars available for this program, composed of 1 billion dollars in cash and the equivalent of 650 million dollars in Eurobonds and were previously evaluated at 5.5 billion dollars. dollars.
As a reminder, the cost of the subsidy program was 700 million dollars during the period preceding the current crisis. It has fallen to $ 500 million currently, or $ 6 billion per year, of which $ 3 billion is for fuels alone. Questions also relate to the reality of the 16 billion dollars of gross reserves of the Bank of Lebanon mainly constituted by the sums available by the 15% of minimum reserves on bank deposits.
The establishment of a prepaid card program would however depend on the approval by the parliament since it would then be an annual loan for an amount of one billion dollars from the Bank of Lebanon against 6 currently. . This program would be aimed at 800,000 families now.
