According to the balance sheet of Banque du Liban (BDL), the Central Bank’s total assets declined by 13.28% annually, to reach $92.95B by end of December 2024, amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL since February 1st 2024. The fall was mainly due to the 80.75% and 21.78% year-on-year (YOY) drop in deferred open market operations and valuation adjustment, which reached $1,527M and $33,753M by end of December 2024.
Furthermore, the gold account, representing 25.93% of BDL’s total assets, increased by 25.76% yearly to reach $24.1B by end of December 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 December 31st, 2023 in addition to the loans to local financial sector. As such, BDL foreign reserve assets, consisting of 10.9% 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 8.09% YOY and stood at $10.13B by end of December 2024. Additionally, foreign reserve assets decreased by $41.03M in the last two weeks of December 2024.
On the liabilities front, financial sector deposits, representing 91.79% of BDL’s total liabilities, decreased by 4.4% annually and reached $85.32B by end of December 2024 compared to last year, of which more than 90% are denominated in dollars. Moreover, public sector deposits, representing 6.42% of BDL’s total liabilities, dropped by 51.9% yearly and reached $5.96B by end of December 2024. Lastly, currency in circulation outside of BDL, consisting of 0.79% of BDL’s total liabilities, plunged by 81.09% annually to reach $733M by end of December 2024 amid adopting the 89,500 LBP/USD official rate by BDL, though it increased by $109 million in the last two weeks of December 2024.
BDL Total Assets, Foreign Reserve Assets and Currency in Circulation by End of December 2024 ($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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