Lebanon balance of payments surplus hits record $4.8bn
Lebanon’s balance of payments in the first nine months of this year recorded a surplus of $4.8 billion, the highest in the country’s history, central bank Governor Riad Salameh said on Thursday.
“We have recorded a surplus of $4.8 billion in the balance of payments up to September of this year and this is a record number. The central bank’s foreign-currency reserves also reached $26 billion and this does not include the gold reserves,” Salameh told a delegation from the Association of Banks in Lebanon in a monthly meeting with the governor.
Over $16 billion have found their ways into the coffers of Lebanese commercial banks in the first eight months of this year, a clear sign of growing confidence in the Lebanese banking system.
Salamhe stressed that many depositors are converting their accounts from US dollars into Lebanese pounds. Bank dollarization in Lebanese banks has fallen to 66 percent only.
The relatively high return on Lebanese pound deposits and the severe economic recession in the US has apparently induced many depositors to drop the US dollar in favor of the local currency.
Salameh told The Daily Star earlier that growths in deposits in Lebanese banks are expected to range between eight to 10 percent each year.
He added that due to the positive results, the Lebanese banks should encourage more lending in the local currency especially since the circulars of the central banks encourage such a move. Salameh indicated that educational and housing loans programs have reached LL1 trillion ($666 million) in Lebanese pounds.
He called on the banks to provide loans to environmental and energy projects in Lebanon.