According to the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL), Lebanon has been witnessing a downward trend in both the value and number of cleared checks this year. As such, the value of cleared checks dropped by 7.64% year-on-year (y-o-y), where the number of checks cleared by Banque du Liban reached 8.16M worth $44.87B by August 2016, as opposed to 8.24M checks with a value of $48.58B, in the same period of 2015.
As more confidence is growing for the Lebanese currency, total value of checks in foreign currencies fell 11.44% y-o-y by August 2016 to $32.03B, while the value of checks denominated in Lebanese Pounds rose by a yearly 3.44% to reach $12.83B. As such, the dollarization rate of checks, declined from 74.46% by August 2015 to 71.39% this year.
The value of returned checks registered an increase of 8.14% to reach $1.11B by August 2016.
As for the month of August alone, the value of cleared checks decreased by 1.21% y-o-y to $5.82B. The value of checks denominated in foreign currencies (representing 65.04% of the total) also witnessed a yearly downturn of 2.10% to $4.20B, as opposed to the value of checks in LBP which slightly grew by 1.16% y-o-y to $1.62B.
Value of Cleared Checks by August ($M)
Source: ABL