Three million depositors one million borrowers

IMF said number of loans doubled since 2005

Last year commercial banks had a total of one million loan customers, according to the Financial Access Survey published by the International Monetary Fund.

The number of loan customers has been on the rise since 2005, when they were just 517,000. Borrowers' penetration rate ranked Lebanon in 13th place among 79 countries covered by the survey. The country came in second among 15 Arab countries, behind Oman.

The number of loans extended by commercial banks stood at 1.8 million in 2011, at a total value of $34 billion. The number of loans was 785,000 in 2005.

Depositors in commercial banks numbered three million last year, up from 2.2 million in 2005. Depositors’ penetration rate ranked the country in 20th place globally, among 91 countries, and in the third place among Arab countries.

The number of deposit accounts totaled 4.7 million, up from three million in 2005. The value of deposits totaled $116 billion.

In 2011, there were 31.5 branches of commercial banks and 41.7 ATMs for every 100,000 adultsup from 29.9 and 32 in 2005.