According to the balance sheet of Banque du Liban (BDL), the central bank’s total assets declined by 11.49% annually, to reach $94.06B by the end of October 2024, amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL since February 1st 2024. The fall was mainly due to the 96.67% year-on-year (YOY) drop in other assets, which reached $243M by the end of October 2024.
Furthermore, the gold account, representing 27.24% of BDL’s total assets, increased by 39.07% yearly to reach $25.62B by the end of October 2024. 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 October 31st, 2023. As such, BDL foreign reserve assets, consisting of 10.91% of total assets (after transferring the Eurobonds to securities portfolio) rose by 10.45% YOY and stood at $10.26B by the end of October 2024. Additionally, foreign reserve assets decreased by $92.66M in the last two weeks of 2024.
On the liabilities front, financial sector deposits, representing 91.6% of BDL’s total liabilities, decreased by 3.19% and reached $86.16B by the end of October 2024 compared to last year, of which more than 90% are denominated in dollars. Moreover, public sector deposits, representing 6.24% of BDL’s total liabilities, dropped by 48.26% yearly and reached $5.87B by the end of October 2024. Lastly, currency in circulation outside of BDL, consisting of 0.6% of BDL’s total liabilities, plunged by 85.01% annually to reach $566.7M by the end of October 2024 amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL.
BDL Total Assets, Foreign Assets and Currency in Circulation by the End of October 2024 ($B):
Source: BDL, BLOMINVEST
N.B.: The foreign assets figures of 2023 and 2024 in the above graph are net of Lebanese Eurobonds.
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