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 June 1st, at the same range as last week.
The peg continues to be supported by the Central Bank’s solid foreign assets, which reached $45.3 billion in May 2018.
The dollarization ratio of private sector deposits grew from 65.84% in December 2017 to 68.25% in February 2018.
Over the past week, the Euro continued to further depreciate against the dollar-pegged LP going from €/LBP 1,768.60 to €/LBP 1,758.74 this week.
As for the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) of the LBP, it recorded a marginal increase of 0.04% to end the week at 113.86 points.
International Forex Market
During the week, the euro weakened against a basket of currencies mainly as a result of the Italian crisis. In fact, the Eurozone’s third largest economy prime minister-designate has abandoned his mandate to form a new government and the country has had a hung parliament since early March. As a result, the euro continued to weaken against the dollar as reflected in the 0.56% downtick in the euro-dollar rate to 1.1667 this week.
Commodities
Gold prices fell this week from $1,299.49 to $1,299.01 by the week ending June 1.