Preconditions for monetary stability

hose who think that monetary stability might be shaken in the foreseeable future (in the next few years) are mistaken. Our outlook is based on statistics and facts. Foreign currency reserves at the Central Bank (BDL) and at banks represent more than 33 percent of the deposits in these currencies. This is without counting the gold reserves, which are worth $12 billion. The level of foreign currency liquidity relative to the size of deposits is considered a good ratio by international standards despite the bleeding of foreign payments that Lebanon witnessed during the first five months of 2019 and which showed a deficit of $5.19 billion. Evidently, a substantial part of this large deficit came from financing Lebanon’s imports of goods and services. The other part resulted from the decline in remittances and foreign direct investment (FDI). Just to refresh the readers’ memory, $1.1 billion of Lebanon’s foreign debt became due and was repaid, which means that a limited exit of capital and deposits