Total Value of Cleared Checks Down by 0.8% to $45B by October 2020

As per the data published by the Association of Lebanese Banks’ (ABL), the total number of cleared checks in the Lebanese financial system slumped from 8.3M checks by October 2019 to 4.95M checks by October 2020. Moreover, the value of total cleared checks declined yearly by a downtick of 0.8% to reach $45B by October 2020, however, values of checks denominated in both Lebanese pounds (LBP) and in foreign currencies witnessed an increase over the months of September and October.

In details, the value of checks in LBP dropped by 6.8% year-on-year (YOY) to reach $16.3B, meanwhile value of checks in foreign currencies rose by 3.1% YOY to reach $28.8B, in the first ten months of 2020.

The volume of cleared checks denominated in Lebanese Pounds and foreign currencies witnessed significant yearly drops of 35.6% and 44.6% to settle at 2.44M checks and 2.51M checks, respectively by October 2020.

We can also note that the yearly decrease of 40.5% in the volume of total cleared checks is associated with a slight yearly drop of 0.8% in the total value of cleared checks which shows that depositors are issuing fewer checks with higher value. In fact, depositors are mainly withdrawing banker’s checks to invest mainly in real estate sector given the uncertainty in the financial sector.

Accordingly, the dollarization of cleared checks in terms of value went up from last year’s 61.51% to 63.87% by October 2020. Meanwhile, the dollarization rate of checks in terms of volume fell from last year’s 54.45% to 50.71% by October 2020.

Notably, the number of returned checks fell by a substantial 52.5% YOY to 100,992 checks while the value of the returned checks retreated by 26.1% YOY over the same period to reach $842M by October 2020.

Number & Value of Cleared Checks by October (in $B)

Total Value of Cleared Checks Down by 0.8% to $45B by October 2020

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