Commercial banks in Qatar saw a substantial year-on-year growth in the private sector customers’ domestic deposits, particularly personal, thus leading to a double-digit growth in the total customer deposits this March, according to the Qatar Central Bank (QCB).

The overseas deposits within the private sector were seen growing faster than the total and domestic customer deposits this March year-on-year, according to the latest statistics from the QCB.

The commercial banks' total customer deposits grew 10% year-on-year to QR879.34bn in March 2020. Domestic deposits reported 8.89% expansion to QR677.5bn and foreign deposits grew faster by 12.98% to QR201.84bn in the review period.

Total customer deposits constituted more than 56% of the commercial banks' total liabilities in March 2020. Total liabilities of the commercial banks stood at QR1.41tn at the end of March 31, 2020.

The private sector foreign deposits of customers witnessed 13.89% year-on-year increase to QR164.22bn; non-banking financial companies' overseas deposits by 13.04% to QR22.89bn and the public sector’s foreign deposits by 3.81% to QR14.73bn in March this year.

Within the domestic deposits, those of private sector witnessed a 6.66% jump to QR376.57bn, those of the public sector by 11.13% to QR286.73bn and those of non-banking finance companies by 27.61% to QR14.19bn in March 2020.

The surge in the private sector domestic deposits of customers has been mainly on account of a robust 10.94% expansion in personal deposits to QR212.24bn and corporate deposits by 1.61% to QR164.34bn at the end of March 31, 2020.

Of the QR677.5bn private sector deposits, the services sector contributed QR237.36bn, industries QR33.34bn, trading QR28.5bn, contracting QR11.89bn and real estate QR4.98bn in the review period.

Within the private sector, current and call domestic deposits increased 11.42% year-on-year to QR122.95bn and savings and time domestic deposits by 4.5% to QR253.63bn in March this year.

Within the private sector, current and call overseas deposits shrank 17.69% year-on-year to QR3.07bn; while savings and time overseas deposits shot up 14.73% to QR161.15bn in March 2020.

In the case of public sector domestic deposits, those of semi-government institutions shot up 20.81% to QR26.24bn; whereas those of government institutions declined 4.11% to QR151.1bn at the end of March 31, 2020.

Within the public sector, call and current domestic deposits soared 88.75% year-on-year to QR76.2bn; whereas savings and time domestic deposits were down 3.27% to QR210.53bn in the review period.

The public sector current and call overseas deposits tripled year-on-year to QR0.06bn and savings and time overseas deposits was up 3.46% to QR14.67bn at the end of March 31 this year.