Salam says 49,000 tons of wheat to enter Lebanon this week

Salam says 49,000 tons of wheat to enter Lebanon this week

Caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam announced Wednesday that “49,000 tons of wheat will enter the country at the end of this week.”

“We should not see queues (outside bread bakeries) after that and we will prosecute whoever wants to fabricate a crisis,” Salam said in a TV interview.

“There is a crisis cell led by the Economy Ministry with the aim of distributing wheat and flour in a fair manner, and what we’re seeing today is the repercussions of what happened last month,” Salam added, hoping wheat ships will arrive in the country in a faster way.

“The crisis is the result of everything that has happened, because the flour has been stolen from the country,” he went on to say.

Lebanese lawmakers on Tuesday voted to use a $150 million World Bank loan to pay for wheat imports into the cash-strapped country.

Already in the throes of a crippling economic crisis, Lebanon is also struggling to cope with a food security crisis that has left half its roughly 6 million people without adequate food.

The war in Ukraine and global inflation have worsened the situation faced by the tiny Mediterranean nation. Three-quarters of Lebanon's population live in poverty and are struggling to cope with rampant