According to the balance sheet of Banque du Liban (BDL), the Central Bank’s total assets decreased by 0.03% annually, to reach $93.31B by mid-February 2025, amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL since February 1st 2024.
Furthermore, the gold account, representing 28.28% of BDL’s total assets, increased by 40.78% yearly to reach $26.4B by end of February 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 February 15th, 2024 in addition to the loans to local financial sector. As such, BDL foreign reserve assets, consisting of 11.28% of total assets (after transferring the Eurobonds to securities portfolio and the other resident and / or illiquid assets to loans to financial sector) increased by 9.3% YOY and stood at $10.53B by end of February 2025. Additionally, foreign reserve assets increased by $2.4M in the last two weeks of February 2025.
On the liabilities front, financial sector deposits, representing 91.03% of BDL’s total liabilities, decreased by 2.40% annually and reached $ 84.94B by end of February 2025 compared to last year, of which more than 90% are denominated in dollars. Moreover, public sector deposits, representing 6.83% of BDL’s total liabilities, rose by 43.42% yearly and reached $6.4B by end of February 2025. Lastly, currency in circulation outside of BDL, consisting of 1.02% of BDL’s total liabilities, rose by 49.68% annually to reach $ 950M by end of February 2025 amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL. It is interesting to note that concomitant to the currency increase, foreign reserve assets increased by almost the same at around $1B during the same period.
BDL Total Assets, Foreign Reserve Assets and Currency in Circulation by End of February 2025 ($B):
Source: BDL, BLOMINVEST
N.B.: The foreign assets figures of 2024 and 2025 in the above graph are net of Lebanese Eurobonds.
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