The Finance and Budget Committee has recently prepared a draft capital control law with the aim of enacting temporary and exceptional restrictions on withdrawals and transfers.
<p style="text-align: justify;">BLOM Bank published its unaudited financial statements for the first quarter of 2021 revealing a 92.84% y-o-y drop in net after tax profit to $1.14 million, down from $15.90 million in Q1-2020. </p>
The number of passengers travelling via the Beirut International Airport (BIA) contracted markedly to 549,576 during the first quarter of 2021, down from 1,165,094 passengers during the same period in 2020.
The Lebanese financial sector’s net foreign assets fell by $95.9 million in March 2021 in comparison with contractions of $340.6 million in February and $410.6 million in January.
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Lebanese Central Bank’s balance sheet conveys some $271.80 million contraction in its foreign assets portfolio during the second half of April 2021 to $21.64 billion, down from $21.91 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 $16.61 billion by end of April. </p>
