The consolidated balance sheet of Lebanon’s commercial banks revealed a 0.11% progress in assets from December 2015’s level of $185.99B to $186.20B in January 2016, which reflected to a 5.95% year-on-year (y-o-y) growth.
In details, total reserves amounted to $71.50B revealing a 0.72% increase over the same period. Loans to the private sector summed up to $54.39B by January 2016, of which around 89% were provided to resident borrowers. Private loans denominated in foreign currencies (FC) ticked up by a monthly 0.14% from December 2015 to $34.45B. In turn, the dollarization rate of private sector loans slipped from 74.83% in December 2015 to 74.76%. Furthermore, claims on the public sector posted a slight increase of 0.17% on a year-to-date basis to $37.87B in January 2016, as the banks’ holdings of T-bills added a monthly 0.18%.
Looking at the liabilities of commercial banks, resident private sector deposits weakened by 0.18% between December 2015 and January to register $119.51B, on the back of a 0.63% decline of FC resident deposits. Worth noting that resident private sector deposits were still 3.70% higher on a year-on-year basis. On the other hand, non-resident private sector deposits went up by 0.39% month-on-month to $31.98B in January and 5.27% annually. In specifics, January 2016 experienced a monthly 0.52% improvement to $53.52B in local currency deposits (resident and non-resident). Moreover, the dollarization rate of total private sector deposits slightly dipped from 64.88% in December 2015 to 64.67% by the end of January this year.
Total Commercial Banks’ Assets in January (in $M)
Source: Central Bank of Lebanon