The Lebanese Pound traded within the range of $/LP 1,514-1,514.5 against the dollar with a mid-price of $/LP 1,514.25 by the week ending March 4th, at the same range as last week.
Lebanese Forex Market
The peg continues to be supported by the Central Bank’s solid foreign assets, which reached $43.4 billion in March 2018.
The dollarization ratio of private sector deposits grew from 65.84% in December 2017 to 68.44% in January 2018.
Over the past week, the Euro depreciated against the dollar-pegged LP going from €/LBP 1,819.70 to €/LBP 1,800.43 this week.
As for the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) of the LBP, it climbed by a weekly 0.89% to 112.08 points from last week’s level of 111.09 points.
International Forex Market
The euro depreciated against the dollar this week, as reflected in the 1.06% downtick in the euro-dollar rate, which slipped from €/$ 1.21 last week to €/$ 1.19 this week. This was mainly due to the decrease in the unemployment rate in the US that reached 3.9% in April compared to 4.1% in March.
Commodities
Gold prices fell over the past week from $1,319.27/ounce to $1,313.53/ounce this week.