According to BDL’s latest monetary report, the BOP recorded a surplus of $1.17B by March 2023, far exceeding the deficit over the same period last year of $1.47B. Accordingly, Net foreign Assets (NFAs) of BDL fell by $830.1M, as BDL has continued to make some intervention on Forex market through the “Sayrafa” rate while the NFAs of commercial banks rose by $2B by March 2023.
For a meaningful analysis, we examine the NFAs of commercial banks. For the month of March 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 26.77% to reach $3.24B, in addition “Non-resident customers’ deposits” fell by 10.84% to reach $21.48B by March 2023. Furthermore, on the asset side, claims on non-resident customers dropped significantly by 54.72% to reach $1.24B by March 2023 and other foreign assets dropped by 15.15% to stand at $2.3B for the same period.
Balance of Payments (BoP) by March 2023 (in $M)
Source: BDL, BLOMINVEST
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