BEIRUT — In normal times, Ziad Hassan, a grocery store
manager in Beirut, would get a daily email from his chain’s management telling
him which prices needed to be adjusted and by how much.
اضافة اعلان
But as Lebanon’s currency has collapsed, sending the economy
into a tailspin, the emails have come as often as three times a day, ordering
price increases across the store.
“We have to change everything,” an exasperated Hassan said,
adding that his employees often weren’t even able to finish marking one price
increase before the next one arrived. “It’s crazy.”
The country’s economic distress grew more acute last week as
the Lebanese pound sank to 15,000 to the dollar on the black market — its
lowest level ever — sucking value from people’s salaries as prices for once
affordable goods soared out of reach. It has since rebounded to about 12,000.
Lebanon has been grappling with a web of economic and
political crises since late 2019 that have led to rampant unemployment,
skyrocketing prices, road closures by angry protesters and a government with no
clear plan to slow the descent. A catastrophic explosion in Beirut’s port in
August, which killed 190 people and left a large swath of the capital in ruins,
only deepened the misery.
In a country where most products are imported, the currency
collapse has left no sector unaffected.
Food prices had risen 400 percent as of December compared
with a year earlier, according to government statistics, while prices for
clothing and shoes had gone up 560 percent and hotels and restaurants more than
600 percent.
Scores of pharmacies across the country went on strike
Friday to protest conditions that have left them without some medicines and cut
into their profits. Professionals including lawyers, teachers, doctors and
university professors have watched the value of their salaries shrink. Many
others have been pushed into poverty.
In August, the United Nations said that more than 55 percent
of Lebanon’s population had become poor, nearly double the number from the year
before. Extreme poverty had increased threefold to 23 percent. And the situation has
worsened since.
The crisis springs from the collapse of a policy by
Lebanon’s central bank to keep the Lebanese pound, or lira, pegged to the
dollar at a rate of about 1,500-1 since 1997. That allowed people to use the
two currencies interchangeably and made it easy for merchants selling products
in pounds to convert their profits into dollars to pay for imports.
But the state’s ability to maintain the peg faltered in late
2019, when mass protests erupted over decades of political corruption and poor
governance. Since then, two governments have resigned and the gap between the
pound and the dollar has widened. Western and UN officials’ calls for
reforms, which could unlock foreign aid and a potential bailout from the
International Monetary Fund, have gone unheeded.
For many Lebanese, the most personal element of the crisis
is the grocery store, where products once considered staples have vanished and
other essentials have tripled or quadrupled in price. There has been a run on
staples like oil, flour, sugar and rice.
“Everything is soaring,” said Suheir al-Jizini, 60, after
realizing that the price of the jug of cooking oil she had bought last week was
now two-thirds higher. “I’m really shocked.”
She had come to the store planning to also buy laundry
detergent and pasta, but realized she didn’t have enough cash. She said her
husband brought in 750,000 pounds per month as a driver. That used to be worth
$500 but was now less than $60.
The World Food Program said in November that food prices in
Lebanon had increased 423 percent since October 2019, the largest jump since
monitoring began in 2007. Prices have continued to rise since, putting acute
pressure on the poor.
Faten Haidar, 29, said she was struggling to pull together
meals for her three children as food prices shot up and her husband’s earnings
from his coffee stand declined. Speaking by telephone from the northern city of
Tripoli, she said that she had only labneh — a strained yogurt — in the fridge
and that she was already in debt to her local shop.
“I don’t know how to pay them,” she said.
The value of soldiers’ and police officers’ salaries has
also fallen, heightening concerns that social unrest and crime will increase.
This month, Mohammed Fahmy, the interior minister, who oversees the security
forces, said those salaries had “reached rock bottom.”
“Three months ago, I would have said the security situation
is starting to break down,” Fahmy told a local news network. “Now, I am saying
it has broken down.”
Addressing military leaders, the head of the Lebanese army,
Gen. Joseph Aoun, earlier this month issued a rare public criticism of the
leaders in Lebanon’s sect-based political system, warning them that his
soldiers were also “suffering and going hungry.”
Addressing the leaders, he asked: “Where are we going? What
do you intend to do?”
Parliament recently authorized a $246 million loan from the
World Bank to provide cash assistance to poor families, but no significant
efforts have been made to stop the wider collapse.
In the grocery store, Hassan, the manager, said his branch
sold less meat every month and more lentils, even though they, too, are
imported and cost five times more than before the crisis.
Fights have broken out in the aisles over staples like rice,
sugar and cooking oil subsidized by the government, he said. And it is common
for customers to get sticker shock in the checkout lane when they realize they
can afford only a few essentials.
“I don’t know how people keep going,” he said. “But it will
eventually cause an explosion.”
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