Value of Cleared Checks Barely Changed by Nov. 2017
According to the Association of Lebanese Banks (ABL), the total number and value of cleared checks fell by 1.42% and 0.49% year-on-year (y-o-y) to stand at 11.13 million (M) and $61.98 billion (B), respectively, by November 2017.
In details, while the volume and value of cleared checks denominated in Lebanese Pounds respectively grew by 6.68% and 8.45% y-o-y, amounting to 4.17M and $19.54B by Nov. 2017, the number and value of foreign currency-denominated checks declined by 5.71% and 4.13% y-o-y, to 6.96M and $42.43B, respectively, by Nov. 2017.
As such, the dollarization rate of cleared checks slipped in volume and value from 65.39% and 71.07% by Nov. 2016 to 62.54% and 68.47%, respectively, by November this year.
It is worthy to note that the number of returned checks incrementally rose by 1.31% y-o-y to 210,829 checks, whereas the total value of returned checks contracted by 13.21% to settle at $1.28B over the period.
In November 2017 alone, each of the total number and value of cleared checks declined by a yearly 2.72% and 1.51% y-o-y, to settle at 1M checks and $5.56B, respectively. In details, the volume and value of LBP-checks cleared in November rose by 8.23% and 11.64% to reach 396,238 and $1.87B, respectively; whereas the volume and value of foreign currency checks decreased by 8.76% and 7.08% to 605,926 and $3.68B, respectively.
Value of Cleared Checks by Nov. (in $M)
Source: ABL
