According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 1.06% in February 2024, compared to 2.87% in January. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 123.21% to 6,214.39 in February 2024, compared to 2,784.13 in February of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first two months of the year 2024 attaining 147.17%. 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 103.35% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 65.01% 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 67.77% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 76.27% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index), some 590.73% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and an unprecedented 95.51% 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 81.47% in February 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 92.99% rally in the prices of recreation, amusement and culture (2.4% weight in the index) as the Lebanese economy has shifted to a dollarized 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 the South (1.81%), followed by the North (1.33%), Nabatieh (1.22%), Beirut (1.17%), Mount Lebanon (0.85%) and Bekaa (0.64%) regions.