According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 3.74% in November 2022, compared to 14.65% in the previous month. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI soared by 142.37% to 1,916.53 in November, compared to 790.73 a year earlier. The average annual increase in Lebanon’s CPI stood at 189.44% in the first eleven months of 2022 when compared to the same period in 2021. All index constituents saw a sharp rise in their respective prices. In details, the index portrays a 171.24% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 181.64% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index) amid the rise in fuel & gasoline prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a shambolic 234.69% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 171.75% rise in health prices (7.7% weight in the index), the 191.35% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and the 226.27% hike in communication prices (4.5% weight in the index) after the shift to partial or total fresh dollar pricing in the healthcare, education and communication sectors. The following section captures the fluctuation in the key constituents of Lebanon’s consumer basket:

On a geographical basis, all regions saw a monthly rise in their CPI values, with the largest increase taking place in the South (5.89%) followed by Mount Lebanon (3.97%), North (3.49%), Beirut (3.46%), Nabatieh (2.61%), and the Bekaa (2.04%) regions.