The balance sheet of the Lebanese Central Bank (BdL) revealed that total assets reached $94.58B in March 2016, recording a 0.18% monthly increase from February’s level and a 6.37% rise from March 2015’s level.
Although foreign assets, constituting 38.69% of total assets, fell by 1.56% to $36.59B, securities portfolio (20.83% of the total assets) added 2.08% month-on-month (m-o-m) to $19.70B by the end of March 2016. Similarly, the value of gold reserves (12.03% of total assets) grew by 0.40% from February’s level to $11.38B, following the 3.52% monthly increase in international gold prices during March 2016.
As for loans to the financial sector (5.63% share of total assets), they barely increased from $5.32B in February 2016 to $5.33B in the third month of the year.
On the liabilities side, financial sector deposits, with a share of 80.05% of the total, ticked up 0.73% (m-o-m) to $75.71B in March 2016. Similarly, public sector deposits (5.26% of total liabilities) decreased by 13.21% from February 2015 to reach $4.98B at the end of the first quarter of 2016.
BDL’s Total Assets in March (in $B)
Source: BDL