According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 0.28% in June 2024, compared to 0.02% in May. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 41.78% to 6,450.23 in June 2024, compared to 4,549.38 in June of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first half of the year 2024 attaining 76.47%. 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 29.58% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 43.11% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), an 18.55% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), an 11.91% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 47.24% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index), some shambolic 587.67% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and a 31.10% 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 23.77% y-o-y in June 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 38.06% 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 Nabatieh and Mount Lebanon regions (monthly decreases of 0.50% and 0.31% respectively), all regions across Lebanon saw a monthly rise in their CPI values in June 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in the South (2.57%), followed by Beirut (1.29%), North (0.49%) and Bekaa (0.44%) regions.