Rola Ibrahim wrote in “Al-Akhbar”, “The Night” yesterday extended to cell lines. The dollars in the phones will be converted into the Lebanese pound according to the official exchange rate in preparation for the approval of the decree raising the tariff and deducting 70% of the value of these dollars (herkat) after the parliamentary elections in order to avoid the outbreak of another “revolution.” Although the measure targets prepaid card hoarders, the loss will befall citizens who have tried to protect their meager incomes.
Dear subscriber, please note that your line balance will appear in Lebanese pounds starting from March 4, 2022. Yesterday, this message was received by all holders of “Alfa” and “Touch” prepaid lines, informing them that the balance registered with them in dollars will be “liberated” tomorrow. This means that whoever had, for example, 10 dollars will wake up to find 15,000 pounds instead after calculating the balance on the basis of the official dollar rate (1,500 pounds). But how is the price of a minute, which today is worth 25 cents, calculated? The two companies will calculate it according to the official price formula, i.e. 375 Lebanese pounds. The same applies to the price of the text message, while the Internet packages remain unchanged, until the decision to raise the price of telecom tariffs. Then the balance will be subject to “Herkat” and lose its current value by adopting another mathematical formula and a different exchange rate.
What happened yesterday is a prelude to the approval of the tariff hike decree in the Council of Ministers after the Ministry of Communications finished preparing it in agreement with the two telecom companies. Contrary to all rumors about postponing the approval of the decree until after the elections, the sources confirm that “the tariff hike will be issued before this due to benefit from the effective cabinet, because the sector does not have the luxury of not approving the decree and postponing it, and the government enters the stage of conducting business.”
However, Communications Minister Johnny Corm does not link the text message that arrived yesterday with deducting any value from the balance. Rather, it is a “measure targeting prepaid card hoarders, most of whom are merchants,” according to what he tells “Al-Akhbar”. Alpha and Touch statistics indicate that there are 200 subscribers in each company, each of whom stores more than $200,000 in his phone, while the value of all cards traded in the market is $450 million. Therefore, the ministry focused on preparing proposals to solve what it considered a “problem”, especially if the tariff was raised, “because it would cause a great financial loss for the sector.”
Next week will be crucial in terms of finalizing the decree in preparation for its re-presentation in the Council of Ministers amid the approval of the majority on this procedure, provided that it is implemented in the post-election period to contain the reaction of public opinion, knowing that this equation led to “the departure of the good by attributing the bad,” and that The biggest loser is the average citizen who acted naturally by buying cards and storing them in his phone for fear of rising prices. An official in one of the two telecommunications companies says that the citizen “purchased these cards priced at 1500 pounds to the dollar, by a decision of the former Minister of Communications, Muhammad Shukair. Therefore, he does not bear any responsibility or guilt to punish him and make him equal with the monopolists, as long as he bought the service and did not steal it or obtain it in an ambiguous manner.