According to BDL’s latest monetary report, the BOP recorded a surplus of $1.64B by February 2023, far exceeding the deficit over the same period last year of $954.9M. Accordingly, Net foreign Assets (NFAs) of BDL fell by $501.7M, as BDL has continued to make some intervention on Forex market through the “Sayrafa” rate while the NFAs of commercial banks rose by $2.14B by February 2023.
For a meaningful analysis, we examine the NFAs of commercial banks. For the month of February as BDL adopted the 15,000 LBP/USD official rate, it was dominated by the decrease in foreign assets and more so foreign liabilities. In more details, on the liabilities side, “Non-resident financial sector liabilities” fell remarkably by 30.99% to reach $3.32B, in addition “Non-resident customers’ deposits” fell by 11.37% to reach $21.47B by February 2023. Furthermore, on the asset side, “claims on non-resident financial sector” fell by 8.99% to reach $4.13B for the same period, and claims on non-resident customers dropped by 53.95% to reach $1.26B.
Balance of Payments (BoP) by February 2023 (in $M)
Source: BDL, BLOMINVEST
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