According to Lebanon’s consolidated commercial banks’ balance sheet, total assets grew by 9.67% year-to-date (y-t-d), to stand at $241.12B by September 2018.
In details, Currency and deposits with BDL (constituting 51.40% of total assets) recorded a 19.85% y-t-d uptick to settle at $193.24B by September 2018. In fact, since the beginning of the year, deposits with the central bank (BDL) witnessed continuous increases mainly due to the BDL offering banks products with attractive returns.
Meanwhile, Claims on resident customers (21.64% of total assets) declined by 2.38% y-t-d to stand at $52.18B by September 2018. In details, the claims in foreign currencies and LBP decreased by 3.27% and 0.53% y-t-d to settle at $34.88B and $17.30B, respectively. Claims on non-resident customers (2.80% of total only) rose by 11.36%. To $56.76B
Worth mentioning, subscriptions to Eurobonds climbed by 17.37% to $16.64B by September while banks subscription to T-bills decreased by 6.95% y-t-d to $16.39B.
On the liabilities side, Resident customers’ deposits (which grasp 56.30% of total liabilities) witnessed an uptick of 1.88% y-t-d to $135.74B by September 2018. In details, deposits in LBP (constituting 35.72% of total resident deposits) added 0.11% y-t-d to $48.48B while deposits in foreign currency (constituting 64.28% of total resident deposits) climbed by 2.89% y-t-d to $87.26B.
As for the Non-resident customers’ deposits (15.36% of total liabilities), they increased by 5.33% y-t-d and totaled $37.03B over the same period on the back of deposits in foreign currencies (constituting 87.17% of total non-resident deposits) recording a growth of 4.52% to $32.28B. As such, the dollarization ratio for private sector deposits rose from 68.72% in December 2017 to 69.14% in September 2018.
In their turn, Non-resident financial sector liabilities grew by 13.08% y-t-d, to $8.46B by September 2018 which further explains banks’ borrowings being partly used to subscribe to BDL’s offerings.
Commercial Banks’ Total assets by September (in $Billions)
Source: BDL