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Lebanon’s central bank says the country will adopt a new official exchange rate that marks a 90 per cent devaluation of its currency.
Lebanon to devalue currency by 90 pct: central bank
Lebanon will adopt a new official exchange rate of 15,000 pounds per US dollar on February 1, central bank governor Riad Salameh says, marking a 90 per cent devaluation from its current official rate that has remained unchanged for 25 years.
The shift from the old rate of 1507 to 15,000 is still far off the parallel market, where the pound was changing hands at about 57,000 per US dollar on Tuesday.
The change will apply to banks, Salameh said, leading to a decrease in the equity of the institutions at the centre of the country’s 2019 financial implosion.
Analysts expect the shift to have less impact on the wider economy, which is increasingly dollarised and where most trades take place according to the parallel market rate.
