Lebanon: Central Bank lifts all expensive fuel subsidies

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB
Associated Press

BEIRUT (AP) — The Lebanese Central Bank has lifted its remaining subsidies on fuel. The spokesman of the crisis-hit country’s Gas Station Owners’ Syndicate told The Associated Press on Monday that fuel will now be priced in U.S. dollars to the country’s black market exchange rate. The Central Bank for years has spent about $3 billion annually to provide dollars to fuel importers to keep gasoline prices stable, but last year started scaling back as the expensive program drained what’s left of its foreign reserves. Lebanon’s economic crisis according to The World Bank is one of the worst the world has witnessed in over a century, plunging three-quarters of the population into poverty.