It took nearly two years for the MPs to approve the issuance of new Lebanese pound notes by the Central Bank (BDL). Gathered on Thursday at the Parliament, they approved a bill presented by MP Ziad Hawat (Lebanese Forces) amending the Monetary and Credit Code and validated in May 2023.  Its adoption paves the way for printing 500,000, and one, two, and five million Lebanese Lira notes, while the national currency has lost 98 percent of its value since the beginning of the economic and financial crisis in 2019, without any new notes being issued. In parallel, this text also allows the issuance of coins of 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, and 20,000 pounds, which will be added to the 250 and 500 pound coins already in circulation, but which are now seldom used due to their negligible value.  One of the main reasons cited is to “meet market needs” and facilitate the daily use of lira. In practice, this means replacing the notes in circulation, rendered obsolete following the country's financial collapse, with others of greater value. The current largest Lebanese note, 100,000 lira, first issued in 1994 and whose latest version was published in 2011, is now worth only $1.1 at the market rate, whereas it was worth $66.7 before the economic collapse. BDL has been running the printing presses at full speed to provide enough 100,000 lira notes, also fueling its depreciation. BDL, which was already preparing for these new issues even while this bill awaited approval, issued, on Dec. 1, 2023, a new 100,000-lira note, smaller in size than the previous one (135 mm long and 66 mm wide, compared to 147 mm and 82 mm before).  A BDL official explained in December 2023 that a 500,000-pound note should be larger than the 100,000-pound note to reflect its higher value. He added that the current size of the 100,000-pound note is already substantial, complicating having even larger notes. One of the reasons mentioned by BDL at the time was the lower printing cost of this new note, as it is smaller than the old one.  As a result, the amount of 100,000-lira notes has exploded in the Lebanese market. According to the latest available figures from the BDL, they accounted for 94 percent of the money supply in circulation in June 2024, totaling over 148,338 billion lira out of the 157,000 billion lira in circulation as of June 2024. In comparison, this same note accounted for 68.6 percent of all currency in circulation in September 2019, just before the crisis worsened, i.e., 5,433 billion lira in 100,000-lira notes out of the 7,920 billion lira in circulation. (ICE BEIRUT)

Fonte notizia: L'Orient Today