According to Lebanon’s consolidated commercial banks’ balance sheet, total assets grew by 1.31% year-to-date (y-t-d) and by 12.55% year-on-year (y-o-y), to stand at $252.75B in Q1 2019.
In details, Resident customers’ deposits (which grasp 53.15% of total liabilities) decreased by an incremental 0.82% y-t-d to $134.34B by March 2019, as deposits in LBP (grasping 34.28% of total deposits) and in foreign currencies (65.72% of total deposits) declined by 0.92% and 0.77% y-t-d to $46.04B and $88.29B, respectively. Non-resident customers’ deposits (14.61% of total liabilities), also retreated by 2.13% y-t-d and totaled $36.92B over the same period on the back of a 2.16% y-t-d downtick in deposits in LBP to $4.22B and a 2.13% y-t-d decline in foreign currencies to $32.70B. As such, the dollarization ratio for private sector deposits slightly retreated from 70.62% in December 2018 to 70.60% in March 2019.Accordingly, total resident and non-resident customers’ deposits stood at $171.26B in Q1 2019, declining by 1.11% y-t-d. In their turn, resident financial sector liabilities grew by 14.37% y-t-d to $1.26B.
On the assets side, Reserves (constituting 54.44% of total assets) recorded a 5.23% y-t-d uptick to settle at $137.60B by March 2019. The increase in reserves came on the back of a 5.25% y-t-d climb in deposits with the central bank (BDL).Meanwhile, Claims on resident customers (19.80% of total assets) decreased by 3.39% y-t-d to stand at $50.04B by March 2019. As for Resident Securities Portfolio (13.76% of total Assets), they witnessed a decline of 1.15% since the beginning of the year to stand at $34.78B . In details, the subscription to T-bills in LBP decreased by 1.89% y-t-d to $17.05B while subscriptions to Eurobonds recorded an uptick of 0.13% to $16.06B by March 2019.
Commercial Banks’ Total Assets by March (in $B)
Source: BDL