According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 0.02% in May 2024, compared to 1.74% in April. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 51.59% to 6,432.52 in May 2024, compared to 4,243.30 in May of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first five months of the year 2024 attaining 85.76%. Almost all index constituents (barring furnishings, household equipment & routine household maintenance) 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 31.67% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 72.39% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), a 10.02% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), a 55.18% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 46.79% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index), some shambolic 589.23% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and a 31.16% 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 23.49% y-o-y in May 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 50.86% 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, and at the exception of the Mount Lebanon and South regions (monthly increases of 1.83% and 0.27% respectively), all regions across Lebanon saw a monthly drop in their CPI values in May 2024, with the sharpest decrease taking place in Nabatieh (3.04%), followed by the North (2.66%), Beirut (1.47%) and Bekaa (1.06%) regions.