News: Security measures can calm the market, but will not allow price stability

Al-Akhbar wrote:

Investigations continued with several currency traders suspended on suspicion of manipulating the lira’s exchange rate against the dollar. The most prominent of these detainees is the Captain of the Money Exchange, Mahmoud Murad, who was arrested yesterday by the Detachment of the South Suburb of Beirut in the Judicial Police, with a signal from Prosecutor Judge Mali Ali Ibrahim. The bank branch manager is also being investigated on the same suspicion. While security sources indicated that currency traders manipulating the exchange rate were still being prosecuted, the cautious arrests were reflected among the owners of the currency exchange shops, many of whom refrained from selling dollars for fear of arrest. Although the owners of the closed stores sold through the “delivery” service, or through itinerant people, financial experts emphasized that security measures can calm the market, but they certainly will not allow the price to stabilize, in light of the continuous demand for the dollar, either to finance the import or to speculate. Or to save. The last point is “fueled” by the banks’ refusal to supply depositors their money in dollars, and the application of Circular No. 148 issued by the Governor of the Bank of Liban, Riad Salameh on April 3 last, to transfer deposits value not exceeding five million pounds per dollar according to the official price, then hand it over to its owners after converting it back to the lira at the “market price” Increasing the cash in liras increases the demand for the dollar in the “black market”. The experts themselves believe that what restores the equilibrium in the banking market is the intervention of the Bank of Lebanon, selling dollars to the money exchangers and forcing them to work mechanisms that avoid speculation, as well as expanding the circle of “subsidized” goods in dollars by official price.