According to Lebanon’s consolidated commercial banks’ balance sheet, total assets grew by 11.81% year-on-year (y-o-y), to stand at $248.88B by January 2019.
In details, Currency and deposits with BDL (constituting 53.39% of total assets) recorded a 23.13% y-o-y increase to settle at $132.88B by January 2019. In fact, during 2018, deposits with the central bank (BDL) witnessed continuous increases mainly due to the BDL offering banks products with attractive returns.
Meanwhile, Claims on resident customers (20.39% of total assets) declined by 4.33% y-o-y to stand at $50.75B by January 2019. In details, the claims in foreign currencies (grasping 68.31% of total claims)and claims in LBP decreased by 2.64% and 7.78% y-o-y to settle at $34.67B and $16.08B, respectively. Claims on non-resident customers (2.79% of total only) rose by 20.32% to $6.96B.
Worth mentioning, subscriptions to Eurobonds and to T-bills climbed by 13.98% and 2.56% to $16B and $17.27B, respectively.
On the liabilities side, Resident customers’ deposits (which grasp 53.75% of total liabilities) recorded a marginal uptick by 0.24% y-o-y and totaled $133.77B. In details, deposits in LBP (constituting 34% of total resident deposits) retreated by 7.17% y-o-y to $45.48B while deposits in foreign currency (constituting 66% of total resident deposits) climbed by 4.54% y-o-y to $88.29B. As for the Non-resident customers’ deposits (14.87% of total liabilities), grew by 4.65% y-o-y and totaled $37B over the same period on the back of deposits in foreign currencies (constituting 88.69% of total non-resident deposits) recording a growth of 5.61% to $32.83B. As such, the dollarization ratio for private sector deposits declined from 68.44% in January 2018 to 67.19% in January 2019.
As for Non-resident financial sector liabilities, they surged by 18.57% y-o-y, to $9.44B by January 2019 which further explains banks’ borrowings being partly used to subscribe to BDL’s offerings.
Commercial Banks’ Total assets by January (in $Billions)
Source: BDL