Lebanon’s Commercial Banks’ Assets Slightly Grew in January to $175.74B

The consolidated balance sheet of Lebanon’s commercial banks revealed a 0.02% progress month on month (m-o-m) in assets to $175.74B in January 2015, which translates to a 6.88% year-on-year (y-o-y) growth.

In terms of assets, total reserves amounted to $64.36B with a 0.73% (m-o-m) increase. Loans to the private sector summed up to $50.56B by January, of which around 90% were to resident borrowers. In more details, private loans denominated in foreign currencies (FC) witnessed a monthly fall of 1.03% to $38.07B. In turn, the dollarization rate of private sector loans slipped from 75.56% in December 2014 to 75.29%. Furthermore, claims on the public sector posted a decline of 0.52% to $37.16B, as the banks’ holdings of both T-bills and Eurobonds dropped by 0.22% and 0.93% m-o-m, respectively.

Looking at the liabilities of commercial banks, resident private sector deposits weakened by 0.31% in January to register $113.77B, on the back of a 0.74% decline of USD resident deposits. Worth mentioning, they were still 5.67% higher on a year-on-year basis. On the other hand, non-resident private sector deposits escalated by 0.26% m-o-m to $30.38B and 11.72% annually, outpacing the growth of resident private deposits. In specifics, January experienced a monthly 0.38% improvement to $49.71B in local currency deposits (resident and non-resident) while those deposits denominated in foreign currencies downturned by 0.49% to $94.90B. Consequently the dollarization rate of resident and non-resident private sector deposits slightly dipped from 65.71% December 2014 to 65.51% by the end of January.

 

Total Commercial Banks’ Assets in January

Lebanon’s Commercial Banks’ Assets Slightly Grew in January to $175.74B

Source: BDL

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *