Saudi Arabia banned imports from Lebanon and, along with three other Gulf states, expelled its ambassador following remarks by an official about the war in Yemen, as long-simmering tensions over Iran’s influence in Lebanon spill over and threaten to damage its already disastrous economy, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Lebanese authorities have started technical discussions to pull the country out of its crisis, a senior IMF official said, stressing the need to address the losses faced by the financial sector, Reuters reported. An IMF programme is widely seen as the only way Lebanon can unlock foreign financial help which it desperately needs to emerge from one of the world's sharpest economic depressions.

Lebanon’s new government held its first meeting Monday with a call by the president to resume talks with the International Monetary Fund to help kick-start its recovery from one of the world’s worst economic crises in more than a century, the Associated Press reported. The 24-member Cabinet’s most pressing mission over the coming weeks will be to help improve conditions in the country of 6 million, including a million Syrian refugees. More than half the population now lives in poverty amid extended power outages and severe shortages in fuel and medicine.

Lebanon’s new prime minister pledged Friday to gain control of one of the world’s worst economic meltdowns, saying lifting subsidies was a critical priority for the small country’s government formed after a year of political stalemate, the Associated Press reported. It is a momentous task facing the 24-minister Cabinet, which includes fresh faces who are prominent experts in their fields, but which still reflects Lebanon’s fractious politics. The country’s economic crisis, unfolding since 2019, has been described as one of the worst in the world in the last 150 years.

Lebanon’s government agreed yesterday to pay tens of thousands of poor families cash assistance in U.S. dollars from a World Bank loan as the country’s economic crisis deepens, the Associated Press reported. The decision comes as Lebanon is expected to end subsidies for fuel by the end of next month, a move that is expected to lead to sharp increases in prices of almost all products. Lebanon’s parliament approved in March a $246 million loan from the World Bank that would provide assistance for more than 160,000 families.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister warned Tuesday that the country is hurtling toward a “social explosion” and appealed on the international community for assistance to prevent the demise of the nation facing multiple crises, the Associated Press reported. Hassan Diab’s plea came as he spoke to diplomats in Lebanon, where politicians have failed to agree on forming a new government, nearly a year after Diab’s Cabinet resigned.

Lebanon's banks, which once powered the economy by sucking in billions of dollars of deposits from abroad, are shedding staff, watching loan books shrink and chasing liquidity to stay afloat, Reuters reported. About 3,000 bankers, or more than 10% of the banking industry workforce, have resigned or lost their jobs so far since a financial crisis flared up in late 2019 - and the numbers keep rising, four senior bankers told Reuters. De facto capital controls are in place, depositors are locked out of most of their savings and lending to the private sector has plummeted.

Lebanon’s currency hit a new low on Sunday, as the country’s economic and political crisis worsened with no apparent solutions in the near future, the Associated Press reported. The currency has lost more than 90% of its value since October 2019, when anti-government protests erupted. Inflation and prices of basic goods have skyrocketed in the country, which imports more than 80% of its basic goods. The U.S. dollar hit 15,300 Lebanese pounds on the black market, a level not seen since March. The official rate still stands at 1,515 pounds to the dollar.

Lebanon scrapped a new dollar-deposit rule on Thursday that triggered minor street protests and meant savers lost the ability to change their money at a more favorable rate, Bloomberg News reported. A day after the Shura Council, the country’s top judicial body, banned a long-standing rule allowing depositors to access their dollars at a rate higher than the official currency peg, Riad Salameh, the governor of Banque du Liban, said the decision was being revoked. The rule “is still in effect,” Salameh told reporters in Beirut after meeting with the president and the head of the council.