According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 1.72% in March 2024, compared to 1.06% in February. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 70.36% to 6,321.16 in March 2024, compared to 3,710.53 in March of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first quarter of the year 2024 attaining 114.46%. 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 51.37% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 174.96% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), a 13.22% 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 48.47% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 45.01% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index), some 589.23% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and a 28.89% spike 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 30.86% in March 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 70.76% 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 in March 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in the North (2.81%), followed by the Beirut (1.71%), Mount Lebanon (1.59%), Bekaa (1.28%), South (1.24%) and Nabatieh (0.81%) regions.