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The Lebanese Central Bank issued on July 8, 2020 intermediate circular no. 564 addressed to banks and financial institutions. The aim of the circular is to amend Basic Circular no. 6116 under the provisions of which banks can resort to the Central Bank to conduct foreign exchange operations for food importers and producers to finance the import of basic food products and raw materials. The circular specifies that the mechanism to benefit from its provisions will be set by a decision by the Minister of Economy and Trade. Banks willing to benefit from the provisions of the circular must ensure at their own responsibility its proper implementation and must also ensure that imported products are strictly for local use. In this regard, banks must obtain from the client an undertaking that the imported products will be used locally and will not be exported, and must also provide the Central Bank with a copy of said undertaking. The circular specified that the client must finance the import in Lebanese pounds, with the concerned bank depositing said funds in the form of bank notes at BDL. The applicable exchange rate would be set by the recently incepted Electronic Trading Platform. Banks that fail to comply with the provisions of the circular must place an amount equivalent to 2 times the size of the import bill in a non-interest bearing account at BDL, and must pay a penalty equivalent to 50% of the transferred amount and charge said penalty to the client. Finally, BDL also revealed that non-compliant importers would not be able to benefit from the provisions of the circular in the future.