Reconstruction in Beirut: Who wants to be the Lebanese Monopoly money?

Walid Abu Rached has probably the most important resource these days in Lebanon: window glass. His workshop is located in Ain Zebde, a sleepy place in the idyllic West of the Bekaa valley. But with the rest it is for him in the past. "It is absurd!", he calls into the phone. "I have not yet experienced that so much glass is needed. Not in all the Wars.“

Christoph Ehrhardt

a correspondent for the Arab countries, based in Beirut.

The people come out of Beirut in the Bekaa valley, so he fixes your window, because the craftsmen were overwhelmed in the capital, and their supplies running low went. Eventually, this could threaten even him. "The economic crisis makes things more difficult. Maybe the glass is to me, maybe the prices are on the rise.“

The Beirut must master a reconstruction under extreme conditions. Of the government, they can hardly expect help with the cleanup, only the squads of volunteers who are everywhere in the destroyed city to help. On the streets of bulging trash container still. And the economic crisis, which is exacerbated for months, was swept away the purchasing power of the people. Many of the reserves are depleted, you would now urgently needed to fix the damage.

dollars are scarce, but urgently needed, because everything in Lebanon will have to be imported. Also, the glass comes from abroad and cannot be paid for with the worthless Lebanese Lira. The black-market exchange rate on Friday at about 1:8000, the official to 1:1500. The Dollar to the Lebanese accounts to be mockingly called "Lollar" and "Monopoly money" ridiculed. They have no value abroad, since the snow-ball system, the Central Bank has procured via the private banks of foreign currency, has collapsed.

"All require dollars or the black market rate"

"All require dollars or the black market rate," complains Paula Abu Ibrahim, the works, of all places, in a shipping company. She has no idea how to do it with the company. The building is destroyed, a day before the Explosion, she brought two more containers on the way, of which every trace is missing.

your content has long been cut in half before the disaster. The employee lives in Mar Mikhael, one of the difficult of the disaster taken area. "How should we live? How are we going to afford the repairs? The doors, the window is all the way. It is as if we were living on the street,“ she says.

The Central Bank has instructed private banks, interest-free loans to spend, in order to protect the many small business owners, as on Thursday the newspaper "An Nahar" reported, based on an official Letter. But even this measure has only a limited effect, because the loan will be paid in the "Lollar".