During the graduation of 149 masters’ students at the Antonine University in Baabda, the Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon Riad Salameh considered that Human Resources constitute an extraordinary source of wealth for Lebanon, reminding that the assets of the Lebanese residents and non-residents reach 300 billion dollars while the balance sheet of Lebanese banks in the country and abroad is equivalent to 110 billion dollars, as indicated by the daily newspaper “L’Orient Le Jour”.

When tackling the subject of the “subprimes”, the Governor insisted that the Lebanese market recorded a rise in the subscription for investment funding and for derived products, despite the political and security tensions.

Moreover, he underlined the fact that the capitalization of the Beirut Stock Exchange experienced a growth of more than 13 billion dollars at the end of 2007, reaching in May 2008 almost 16 billion dollars.

On the other hand, he noted an improvement of 30 to 40% in the Real-Estate prices during 2008. “This improvement in the indicators is due to the policy of monetary stability and the preventive measures adopted by the Central Bank in order to protect the banking sector and the financial markets during these last years. This sector has thus preserved the liquidity and the confidence, which are both necessary to the financing of the private and public sectors”, he declared.

Finally, the governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon assessed that “the imported inflation reduces the Lebanese purchasing power by 15%” and underlined that “the improvement of the purchasing power and the cessation of the brain drain require a structural reform”.