According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at 0.64% in August 2024, compared to 1.97% in July. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 35.00% to 6,619.77 in August 2024, compared to 4,903.51 in August of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate attaining 63.59% for the first eight months of the year. 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 21.34% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 34.88% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), an 11.44% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), some 8.49% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the frantic 17.83% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index), a shambolic 587.67% appreciation in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and a 28.72% 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 23.24% y-o-y in August 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 37.41% 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 August 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in Beirut (1.13%), followed by the North (1.00%), South (0.81%), Mount Lebanon (0.50%), Nabatieh (0.46%) and Bekaa (0.10%) regions.