Total assets of commercial banks grew to $119.9 billion in the first quarter of 2010, an increase by four percent from the end of 2009.

Customer deposits increased to $98 billion at the end of March, up from $95.8 billion at the end of 2009.

The rise in customer deposits was mainly driven by the increase in deposits by local residents, by $2.9 billion to $36 billion. Non-resident deposits increased to by $0.5 billion to $62 billion.

Banking loans rose to $30.7 billion, increasing eight percent from the end of 2009, the figures showed.

Moreover, figures released by the Central Bank showed that credit and debit card transactions, payments and withdrawals, from ATMs and Points of Sales (POS) have reached $1.6 billion over the first quarter of 2010, which represents an eleven percent increase compared to the same period last year.

According to the figures, ATM cash withdrawals by residents totaled $1.1 million, for the quarter, which constitutes the largest size of total plastic cards transactions (almost 68 percent). POS purchases by residents reached $313 million, or 19.5 percent of total ATM-POS transactions.

The total number of payment cards rose only three percent to 1.6 million cards for the period. Residents held almost 97 percent of total payment cards at the end of the quarter.

The total number of ATM machines increased to 1,222 by the end of March 2010, up from 1,139 machines a year ago in the corresponding period. The Greater Beirut region boasted 49 percent of total payment machines or 603 ATMs of the entire local ATM network at at the end of March.