According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 17.22% in October 2023, compared to 1.38% in the previous month as tuition prices soared by around 581% at the onset of the scholastic year. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 215.43% to 5,827.4 in October, compared to 1,847.4 in October of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first ten months of 2023 standing at 227.38%. All index constituents saw a sharp rise in their respective prices owing to the acute depreciation of the Lebanese Pound against the US Dollar. In details, the index portrays a 218.06% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 157.71% 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 151.81% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 204.94% rise in health prices (7.7% weight in the index), the 595.18% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and the unprecedented 120.58% 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. It is worth noting that restaurants & hotels prices soared by 227.06% y-o-y (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 136.52% rally in the prices of recreation, amusement and culture (2.4% weight in the index) as the Lebanese economy has shifted to a dollarized cash one. The following section captures the fluctuation in the key constituents of Lebanon’s consumer basket:

On a geographical basis, all regions across Lebanon saw a monthly rise in their CPI values, with the sharpest increase taking place in Mount Lebanon (22.29%), followed by the Beirut (16.19%), North (13.91%), Bekaa (12.47%), South (9.41%) and Nabatieh (9.27%) regions.