According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 1.97% in July 2024, compared to 0.28% in June. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 35.37% to 6,577.39 in July 2024, compared to 4,858.95 in July of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate for the first seven months of the year 2024 attaining 68.90%. 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 24.51% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 31.32% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), a 17.82% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), a 7.52% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 19.65% 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 28.45% 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 24.45% y-o-y in July 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 35.88% 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 July 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in the Bekaa (3.03%), followed by Beirut (2.64%), North (2.18%), Mount Lebanon (1.91%), South (0.79%) and Nabatieh (0.51%) regions.