According to the balance sheet of Banque du Liban (BDL), the Central Bank’s total assets declined by 13.44% annually, to reach $93.22B by mid-January 2025, amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL since February 1st 2024. The fall was mainly due to the 80.60% and 24.49% year-on-year (YOY) drop in deferred open market operations and valuation adjustment, which reached $1,554M and $33,061M by mid-January 2025.
Furthermore, the gold account, representing 26.59% of BDL’s total assets, increased by 30.87% yearly to reach $24.79B by mid-January 2025. Regarding foreign assets item, recently BDL amended it and replaced it by foreign reserve assets item to include only non-resident and liquid foreign assets. Thus, other resident and / or illiquid assets were transferred to securities portfolio or loans to local financial sector. In more details, Lebanese Government Eurobonds with a market value of $ 4.85B were transferred to securities portfolio; whereas $ 298.8M was transferred to loans to financial sector. Therefore, and in order to calculate the YOY change of foreign reserve assets, we deducted the Lebanese Eurobonds from foreign assets as of January 15th, 2025 in addition to the loans to local financial sector. As such, BDL foreign reserve assets, consisting of 11.1% of total assets (after transferring the Eurobonds to securities portfolio and the other resident and / or illiquid assets to loans to financial sector) rose by 10.29% YOY and stood at $10.35B by mid-January 2025. Additionally, foreign reserve assets increased by $210.47M in the first two weeks of January 2025.
On the liabilities front, financial sector deposits, representing 91.42% of BDL’s total liabilities, decreased by 4.22% annually and reached $85.22B by mid-January 2025 compared to last year, of which more than 90% are denominated in dollars. Moreover, public sector deposits, representing 6.54% of BDL’s total liabilities, dropped by 53.88% yearly and reached $6.1B by mid-January 2025. Lastly, currency in circulation outside of BDL, consisting of 1.01% of BDL’s total liabilities, plunged by 75.38% annually to reach $939M by mid-January 2025 amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL, though it increased by $206 million in the first two weeks of January 2025.
BDL Total Assets, Foreign Reserve Assets and Currency in Circulation by Mid-January 2025 ($B):
Source: BDL, BLOMINVEST
N.B.: The foreign assets figure of 2025 in the above graph is net of Lebanese Eurobonds.
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