Lebanese Forex Market
The Lebanese Pound (LP) continues to steady within the range of $/LP 1,514 – 1,514.5 against the dollar, with a mid-price of $/LP 1,514.25 this week.
The peg also continues to be supported by the Central Bank’s solid foreign assets, which were further replenished to reach $38.1B by November 2019.
In turn, the dollarization ratio of private sector deposits increased from 70.62% in Dec. 2018 to 73.43% in October 2019.
Over the week, the Euro appreciated against the dollar-pegged LP, with the currency pair standing at €/LBP 1,679.01 compared to last week’s €/LBP 1,668.24. As for the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) of the LP, it fell by a weekly 0.14% to 117.94 points by the week ending Dec. 26th 2019.
International Forex Market
The Euro/USD currency pair went from last week’s €/USD 1.1066 last week, to €/USD 1.1138 by December 26th. On one hand, the euro strengthened on the back of data which revealed German import prices decreased by 2.1% in November, instead of the steeper decline of 3.5% recorded in October and also beating the market expectations of a 2.3% downtick. On another hand, the USD in its turn has weakened over the week, mainly as trade-related tensions between the United States and China began to cool off with the wrapping of a phase 1 trade agreement to be rolled out for New Year’s.
Commodities
International gold prices continued their uptrend, going from last week’s $1,478/ounce to this week’s $1,511/ounce.