مصرف لبنان
Concurrently with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Banque du Liban (BdL) in March 2020 defaulted on $90 billion of sovereign debt obligations, triggering a collapse in the value of the Lebanese pound. The decision was taken unanimously at a cabinet meeting under the chairmanship of Hassan Diab on 7 March. That in turn caused the complex and opaque financial engineering with which the BdL maintained the nation's tenuous stability to crash and burn. Simultaneously, commercial banks imposed "informal capital controls limiting the amount of dollars depositors can withdraw as well as transfers abroad." Capital controls were expected to remain in place until at least 2025. It was remarked at the time that Lebanon, whose population is under 7 million, "produces little and imports about 80 percent of the goods it consumes." Debt servicing had consumed 30 percent of recent budgets.