The country has been in default since 2020

In fact, the Lebanese authorities do not have the economic resources to pay for fuel imports in US dollars. Before the further collapse of the two plants, people had already quit a maximum of two hours of electricity per day. A country without electricity also means hospital paralysis, equipment failure, and a health alert that exacerbates the financial crisis. The government officially announced the default in March 2020.

Add to this the effects of the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, crammed into containers for years, exploded. More than two hundred people were killed, a third of the population was forced to flee their homes and the port was paralyzed.

One thing is enough to understand the situation in which the Lebanese find themselves: the purchasing power of public sector workers, paid in pounds, has collapsed. Salary, which in 2019 was about a thousand dollars, today is 80.