Central Bank Third Vice Governor Salim Chahine has confirmed that there would be no “mass resignation” of the bank’s four vice governors.

In remarks to Annahar newspaper published Monday, Chahine also said that the vice governors will not accept to “keep using depositors’ funds to cover the expenses of the state and the Sayrafa platform.”

“The law will be strictly implemented and the responsibility will be shifted to where it should be – in the government and not in the Central Bank,” he added.

“Any intervention that will be requested from the Central Bank will only take place through a decision from the government and a legal and constitutional cover,” Chahine went on to say.

“The discussions are currently revolving around the means to cooperate with the government and parliament to reconcile viewpoints should we assume the governorship’s responsibilities, in order to work within the correct governance principles, unify and liberate the exchange rate and secure monetary and banking stability,” he stressed.

And in an interview with the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper, Chahine said that there would be “a new (currency exchange) platform that will be more transparent and bigger in size.”

According to media reports, the new platform will be launched in cooperation with Bloomberg or Reuters.

“Through obliging traders and merchants to buy and sell in Lebanese lira and asking importers to buy dollars for importation through the new electronic platform, we will be able to achieve a bigger trading volume and this will likely support a more efficient pricing in the floated and free exchange rate market,” Chahine noted.

“Keeping Sayrafa and its current mechanisms will lead to further lira losses and also dollar losses, when the Central Bank fails to buy the needed USD sums from the market. That’s why there is a dire need to move to an organized exchange rate market that reflects the true balance between supply and demand,” he pointed out.