According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index stood at a negative 0.18% (first dip since February 2022) in September 2024, compared to an increase of 0.64% in August. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 32.92% (slowest increase since March 2020) to 6,608.04 in September 2024, compared to 4,971.28 in September of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate attaining 59.39% in the first nine months of the year. The decelerating inflation pace owes to the widespread dollarization of products & services, coupled with the stability of the LBP/USD exchange rate since the month of July 2023. In details, the index portrays a 19.68% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 35.46% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), a 7.15% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), some 3.96% rally in the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index), not to mention the 17.91% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index), a shambolic 587.24% rally in education prices (6.6% weight in the index) and a 28.40% spike in communication prices (4.5% weight in the index). It is worth noting that restaurants & hotels prices soared by 22.28% y-o-y in September 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 31.11% rally in the prices of recreation, amusement and culture (2.4% weight in the index). The following section captures the fluctuation in the key constituents of Lebanon’s consumer basket:

On a geographical basis, all regions across Lebanon barring the North (0.17% increase) saw a monthly dip in their CPI values in September 2024, with the sharpest contraction taking place in Nabatieh (0.77%), followed by the South (0.34%), Bekaa (0.28%), Mount Lebanon (0.22%), and Beirut (0.01%) regions as a result of the escalation of the war.