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Are we going to starve? A question that many have been discussing since the lira lost its stability against the rise in the price of the dollar. This question is followed by two other questions: will the BDL continue to import basic wheat materials, medicines and fuel? Is this import affected by the decline in remittances from expats to their families in Lebanon, especially after the recent circulation of the Bank of Lebanon by charging them in the Lebanese currency? Economists whom Al-Akhbar contacted agree that what the Bank of Lebanon calls the “reserve” of $ 21 billion is nothing but the money of the remaining depositors: less than $ 5 billion is spent on fuel (about 2.5 for electricity and the rest for fuel), while the 15 billion is the total import cost.
But with the current crisis, Lebanon will not be able to import more than half of this amount. The result is that we are heading towards a deepening crisis, and all sectors related to the consumption of imported materials will be deemed influenced. The irony here is that economists see in this crisis an opportunity to float domestic production, according to a theory that production is high and that with low importation citizens are supposed to pay to replace imported goods with Lebanese products . Luxury is no longer an option, nor spending tens of millions of dollars importing roses, milk, milk, various cheeses and wines instead of going to agriculture and industry.
The main question asked by one of the experts: why we consume Australian apples, for example, instead of Lebanese, and why we import juice and milk from Saudi Arabia, and this agreement should not be affected. Lebanese will have to drink Lebanese wine (53 wine factories operate in Lebanon) instead of French and Italians, and buy clothes and home furnishings. Keep in mind that former Minister of the Economy, Mansour Batish, imposed additional fees on the importation of furniture, which led to the frenzy of merchants.
In figures, the volume of consumption in Lebanon amounts to 105% of production, that is, 57 billion and a half billion dollars, according to studies carried out in 2018. There is no country in the world where consumption exceeds production, which is what economists describe as “crime”. It should be noted that only 15% is government consumption (7 billion and a half billion), unlike what is promoted, and the rest is due to household consumption (50 billion).
On the other hand, hunger in the sense of not having the ability to import fuel, wheat and medicines depends on whether the Governor of the Bank of Lebanon and the Lebanese government decide to fulfill their obligations or not, since the priority of the government is an action plan to increase production and reduce import.
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