Banque du Liban (BdL) announced on August 24, 2023 the results of the inspection of its inventory of gold holdings that ALS lnspection  UK Ltd (ALS) carried out in 2022. It indicated that the international auditing firm KPMG, in association with the International Monetary  Fund (IMF), contracted ALS to provide its expertise and assistance in order to independently inspect and verify the existence and quality  of BdL's monetary gold holdings of bars and coins that are stored in BdL's vault.  It said that ALS weighed and tested, by using numerous pieces of non-destructive analysis equipment, each individual gold bar and coin.  It added that ALS employees relocated the gold bars and coins to a newly-built dedicated location within BdL's vaulting facilities. It  also noted that KPMG asked ALS to digitally record BdL's large inventory of gold holdings, which would provide the basis for future  annual audits.  Further, BdL indicated that ALS confirmed that the central bank has over 13,000 bars and 600,000 coins, which is in line with the goldtroy ounce amounts that BdL had documented as its official gold holdings.  ALS lnspection UK Ltd is a UK based subsidiary of the Australian publicly-listed ALS Limited, which provides independent global inspection and analysis services for metals, minerals, ores, precious metals, ferro alloys and solid fuels. The company is also an affiliate  member of the London Bullion Market Association, which is the international trade association representing the global Over The Counter  bullion market, and is widely recognized as the global authority on precious metals.BdL had announced on November 24, 2022 the completion of the audit process of Lebanon's gold reserves that consist of bullions and  coins. It said that BdL's external auditor selected and mandated a specialized international auditing firm, in coordination and agreement  with the IMF, to conduct the audit. It noted that the completion of the special purpose audit of BdL's foreign asset position comes at the  request of the IMF and aims to improve the transparency of BdL. Further, BdL declared that the firm concluded after it conducted its  audit that BdL's gold assets, which consist of gold bullions and coins, correspond exactly to the journal entries in BdL's accounting  books.  The latest available figures published by BdL show that the value of BdL's gold reserves reached $18.04bn at the end of July 2023, constituting a rise of $1.4bn (+8.3%) from the end of 2022 and an increase of $1.77bn (+10.9%) from $16.2bn at end-July 2022. The value  of gold reserves reached a peak $18.7bn at mid-April 2023.  The special audit of BdL's foreign assets is one of the prior actions that are part of the Staff-Level Agreement (SLA) on a $3bn four-year  Extended Fund Facility that the Lebanese authorities signed with the IMF on April 7, 2022 to support a comprehensive economic and  financial reform program. The SLA includes nine prior actions that consist of auditing BdL's foreign assets, as well as the enactment ofan emergency bank resolution legislation, the amendment of the banking secrecy law, the enactment of the 2022 budget, the approval  of a medium-term fiscal and debt restructuring strategy, the unification of the exchange rates, the implementation of capital controls,  and the initiation of an evaluation of each of the country's 14 largest banks. (ICE BEIRUT)

Fonte notizia: Byblos Bank, Lebanon This Week, 21-26 August 2023