Lebanese Forex Market
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 May 24th, at the same range as last week.
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 continued to further depreciate against the dollar-pegged LP going from €/LBP 1,773.19 to €/LBP 1,768.60 this week.
As for the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) of the LBP, it recorded an increase of 0.52% to end the week at 113.82 points.
International Forex Market
During the week, the dollar advanced against a basket of currencies mainly due to a truce between the United States and China on trade tariffs, which prompted investors to cut back their short positions on the dollar. As a result, the euro continued to weaken against the dollar as reflected in the 0.26% downtick in the euro-dollar rate to 1.1732 this week.
Commodities
Gold prices rose this week from $1,287.4 to $1,299.49 by the week ending May 24th.