在黎巴嫩買機票, 要新資金, 其本地銀行資金(無論是什麼貨幣)都恕不受理
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Lebanon’s national airline set to accept ‘fresh dollars’ only
Lebanon’s national airline will stop accepting payment in US dollars from deposits in local banks, its chairman said, intensifying questions about the real value of $87bn of deposits in Lebanon’s stricken banking sector. “We will start selling our tickets in fresh dollars,” said Mohamad el-Hout, Middle East Airlines chairman, distinguishing real dollars transferred from abroad and free of severe banking restrictions from the assets denominated in US dollars trapped in Lebanon’s moribund banks. A decision to reject “local dollars” by MEA could make travel unaffordable for Lebanese people lacking a foreign income — a blow for a country proud of its mercantile, international image, now facing poverty levels exceeding 50 per cent because of its economic crisis. Lebanese used to spend dollars and Lebanese pounds (LBP) interchangeably, and 80 per cent of private sector deposits are in US dollars — worth $87bn, banking data show. But the illiquid banks now only permit dollar movement via bankers’ cheques inside Lebanon and only the most urgent foreign transfers. Customers must withdraw their dollars as LBP cash, at a L£3,900 rate even though $1 on the black market currently fetches more than L£8,000. Because a “dollar in the banks is equivalent to 40 per cent of […] a dollar outside Lebanon,” Mr Hout said, continuing to accept these local dollars was commercially unviable because 85 per cent of the airline’s expenses were in hard currency. “If I continue . . . I will have all of these [local] dollars in our bank and I’m not able to use them or to transfer them outside,” Mr Hout told the Financial Times, insisting: “This is not bread. This is travel . . . you pay for your hotel in fresh dollars.”
