According to Lebanon’s consolidated commercial banks’ balance sheet, total assets grew by 6.71% year-to-date (y-t-d), to stand at $234.60B by June 2018.
In details, Reserves (constituting 50.15% of total assets) recorded a 13.21% y-t-d uptick to settle at $117.65B by June 2018. The increase in reserves came on the back of a 13.23% y-t-d climb in deposits with the central bank (BDL) which stood at $117.1B in H1 2018 as the CB is offering banks attractive returns on USD deposits.
Meanwhile, Claims on resident customers (22.42% of total assets) retreated by 1.58% y-t-d to stand at $52.60B by June 2018. In details, the claims in foreign currencies decreased by 2.76% y-t-d to settle at $35.06B.Claims on non-resident customers (2.75% of total only) rose by 6.09%.
As for Claims on government sector they grew by 5.16% since the beginning of the year to reach $35.08B noting that subscriptions to Eurobonds climbed by 13.45% to $16.08B by June 2018. Recently , in May 2018 , the CB sold $3B worth of Eurobonds to banks . Meanwhile, banks subscription to T-bills decreased by 3.86% y-t-d to $16.94B.
On the liabilities side, Resident customers’ deposits (which grasp 57.70% of total liabilities) grew by an incremental 1.60% y-t-d to $135.37B by June 2018. In details, deposits in LBP added 2.57% y-t-d to $49.67B and constituted 36.7% of total resident deposits while deposits in foreign currency climbed marginally by 1.04% y-t-d to constitute 63.3% of total resident deposits. As for the Non-resident customers’ deposits (15.66% of total liabilities), they increased by 4.52% y-t-d and totaled $36.75B over the same period on the back of deposits in foreign currencies (constituting 87.37% of total non-resident deposits) recording a growth of 3.96% . As such, the dollarization ratio for private sector deposits slightly retreated from 68.72% in December 2017 to 68.42% in June 2018.
Commercial Banks’ Total assets by June (in $Billions)
Source: BDL