The Lebanese Central Bank’s balance sheet conveys some $141.93 million contraction in its foreign assets portfolio during the second half of June 2020 to $32.96 billion, down from $33.10 billion a fortnight earlier. When factoring out BDL’s portfolio of Lebanese Eurobonds amounting to $5.03 billion as per the disclosure made by the Central Bank, the latter’s foreign currency reserves would settle at $27.93 billion by end of June. From another standpoint, gold reserves at BDL rose by 3.10% ($491.37 million) in the second half of June to $16.33 billion as gold prices increased over rising concerns of new COVID-19 cases.

On an annual basis, BDL’s foreign assets came in 9.43% ($3.43 billion) lower than the $36.39 billion reading reported at end of June 2019. Conversely, the value of gold reserves soared by 25.12% ($3.28 billion) when benchmarked to the $13.05 billion figure recorded in the same period last year. It is worth noting that BDL’s total reserves (foreign currency and gold) cover some 153 months of debt service and constitute around 47.89% and 53.19% of Lebanon’s gross and net public debt on a respective basis.

In a related note, BDL’s balance sheet widened by $1.28 billion during the second half of June to $152.01 billion owing to some 1.88% ($0.90 billion) expansion in the value of other assets to $49.09 billion representing capitalized  open market operations and seigniorage, coupled with a 3.10% appreciation in the value of gold reserves to $16.33 billion and a 0.15% increase in the value of the securities portfolio to $38.70 billion which outweighed the 0.43% contraction in the value of foreign assets to $32.96 billion and the 0.22% drop in loans to the local financial sector to $14.67 billion.

The share of BDL’s foreign assets of the latter’s total assets dropped to 21.68% by end of June 2020, compared to 21.96% by mid-June, while the share of gold reserves expanded to 10.74% from 10.51% two weeks earlier.