According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 25.52% in February 2023, compared to 8.43% in the previous month. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI soared by 189.67% to 2,784.13 in February, compared to 961.15 in February of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first two months of 2023 standing at 156.07%. All index constituents saw a sharp rise in their respective prices which can be partly attributed to the acute depreciation of the Lebanese Pound against the US Dollar to around LBP 85,000 per USD in the parallel market during the month of February. In details, the index portrays a 260.54% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 196.76% 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 206.69% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index) in part owing to the hike in the kilowatt hour rate to 27 cents per US Dollar, not to mention the frantic 315.46% rise in health prices (7.7% weight in the index), the 192.20% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and the 379.80% 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 sharpest increase taking place in Nabatieh (29.81%) followed by the Beirut (29.51%), North (29.22%), South (28.17%), Bekaa (26.66%), and Mount Lebanon (22.11%) regions.