Lebanese Forex Market
Demand for the local currency on the Lebanese forex market slightly weakened with the value of the Lebanese Pound trading within the range of $/LP 1,513.75 -1,514.5 with a mid-price of $/LP 1,514.13 compared to last week’s $/LP 1,513 – 1,514 with a mid-price of $/LP 1,513.5. The peg continues to be supported by the high foreign assets at the Central Bank, which reached $42.9 billion in January 2018.
The dollarization ratio of private sector deposits rose from 65.82% in December 2016 to 68.51% by the end of November 2017.
Over the past week, the Euro appreciated against the dollar-pegged LP going from €/LBP 1,878.93 on 26th January to €/LBP 1,882.11 on February 02nd.
As for the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) of the LBP, it fell from 108.49 points last week to 108.48 points this week.
International Forex Market
During the week, the euro-dollar grew by a weekly 0.17% to 1.2485 due to economic optimism in the Eurozone. The Eurozone’s PMI reading for December (60.6) matched predictions and was also close to November’s reading (60.1) which turned out to be the highest since the PMI survey was launched in June 1997.
Commodities
Gold prices fell from $1,351.28/ounce last week to $1,335.22 this week ahead of what is expected to be a positive report on US jobs for the month of January.