Tag Archives | money

How to Minimize the Effect of the Dollar Crisis on You

For over a month now we have witnessing a dollar shortage in Lebanon which caused two parallel markets to be established for the currency. The first market is the one regulated by the central bank where financial institutions are supposed to deal by the ~1,500L.L rate, while the other is controlled by money changers where the rate changes from day to day and follows the supply and demand principle. And as banks decrease their supply of dollars to the market, their clients feel obliged to turn to money changers who have been imposing a rate as high as 1,750 or 1,800L.L sometimes (20% difference).

This has unfortunately impacted a lot of people since most of us earn our salaries in LBP but pay for goods and services that are priced in USD. And the 20% variation in exchange rate has been translated as an increase in the price of goods. So if I am holding lebanese lira and want to buy a $10 item, it now costs me 18,000L.L instead of 15,000L.L in case a bank refuses my exchange transaction and I opt to do it at some money changer. A real example is now the price of mobile recharge cards which prices have significantly increased in case you want to pay in Lebanese lira.

To avoid this effect of prices inflation on me, I personally have been using digital channels to settle my payments using my credit card (i.e. dealing directly with the financial institutions at the ~1,500L.L rate) whenever I have the option to do so.

This is applicable to mobile recharge cards and bill settlement, internet subscription renewal, money transfers.

Mobile recharge cards & bill settlement

For touch lines you should first create a user on their website and then you can either recharge a prepaid line here or settle your bill here.

Alfa users also need to create an account on Alfa’s website and they can recharge a prepais line here or settle their bills here.

On the other hand, a lot of ATMs around the country gives you the capability of purchasing mobile recharge vouchers when using your card, and you will of course be charged in dollars at the official exchange rate.

Internet subscription renewal

Likewise, the most popular ISPs offer renewing or recharging your internet account online. To my knowledge, Cyberia, IDM, TerraNet, Sodetel, WISE, and MOBI, all offer the service.

Ogero

Ogero actually set their prices in lebanese lira but I’m including it here because I find it more convenient to pay my bill online than physically going to one of their central offices, or to one of their payment partner (like OMT for example) that impose 2,000L.L extra charge for every settled bill.

To settle your bill online, create an account here and then linkt you landline to it by inputting your number and your initial subscription date which you find on any old bill you have.

Money transfers

Last time I tried to transfer dollars outside Lebanon through one of the money transfer companies, the agent didn’t accept the money unless it was in the currency. However, Western Union recently launched a service that allows you to transfer money online using your credit card. I personally didn’t try it yet but you sign up to it here, and you are required to verfiy your identity by taking your ID card to one of the BoB Finance branches in town before starting to use the service.

Other services

Many service providers provide online services that are either not much advertised or people simply don’t know about. If you are subscribed with CableVision for example, you can pay onlin here instead of going through your dealer. And the same applies to beIN here. So always inquire with any solution provider about such possible payment options that can make your life easier.

The above all works as long as bank provide their clients with reasonable amount of dollars to settle their credit cards. So in sum, try as much as you can to perform your exchange operation at regulated institutions until we hopefully make it out of this crisis!

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Touch is Into The Money Lending Business Now?

To all those who run out of credit before their line cycle is over, Touch recently added a new service to its prepaid Magic lines called “Advance Credit” allowing their subscribers to get an advance credit amount once their balance falls below $1, and it of course gets paid back once they recharge their line.

It sounds all nice until you know the rate at which the advance amount should be paid… A screenshot on Facebook shows that for a $3 in advance, $4.2 get deducted once the subscriber has enough credit again. That’s a whopping 40% in interest and it sounds more like usury to me…

Even banks are not that rude with their offerings… With such rate this must be Touch’s most profitable service right now! But then again, no matter how awful you think their tactic is, you wouldn’t expect less from a company operating in a monopolized industry.

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Generator Provider in Chiyah Offers Free Electricity During Ramadan

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While the owners of private generators are generally hated in Lebanon for forming cartels and making illogical profits sometimes from the government’s failure, you can’t but respect Ishtirak Al Nour’s gesture to provide free 5 Amperes electricity during the month of Ramadan for the people in Chiyah. He also has no problem if someone wants to subscribe for free during this month only.

Many poor families cannot afford paying for a generator subscription and will definitely appreciate being able to keep a fan turned on during the day to make Ramadan a bit easier for them.

Hat tip to you sir, whoever you are!

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Charles Ayoub begs Bashar Al-Assad for money

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I’m not sure what Charles Ayoub has been smoking lately, but it sure seems like good stuff. The man wrote an article literally begging the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad to lend him $700,000 since his newspaper (Addiyar) is going through a financial crisis, otherwise he’ll have to act against his father’s will and sell his house!

You can read the whole article here.

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Overnight millionaire – Amer Hazimeh

The guys is barely 30 years old and yet managed to steal more than 45 million dollars by borrowing money from banks that trusted him and convincing people to invest their money with him in gold and stocks.

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A beginner’s guide to Lebanon’s oil and gas

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Check out this nice informative page created by Executive magazine for everything you need to know about Lebanon’s oil and gas.

The page has information about how much oil does Lebanon have, how did we end up falling behind out neighbors in exploring our fields, who’s holding the negotiations from our side with the oil and gas giants in the world, where will the money go, and what is the dispute with Israel about.

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Noor Holding nothing but a scam

Remember the construction company that made a media buzz  back in 2009 with the Cedar Island project it was promoting?

Call me naive, but this company, Noor Holding, had everything needed to let you think they’re doing legitimate business. A prestigious office in downtown Beirut, excessive advertising, claims about hundreds of household units being built, a good looking website, a “golden” phone number (01-999999), and a TV station. And at the end it turned out that the whole thing was nothing but a scam with the founder Mohammad Saleh (the man in the above photo) escaping with 5 million dollars! You can read everything about the issue in this article from Al-Akhbar.

I definitely don’t want to be in the shoes of those who have paid down payments for booking apartments with Noor Holding. These people will probably get nothing but news about Mr. Saleh moving from one country to another with their money…

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