The Ministry of Economy and Trade (MOET) and in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP) recently launched an index (Market Food Price Index “MFPI”) to gauge the changes in the prices of 73 sub-constituents of essential foods, clustered within twelve main constituents, across a sample of 1,000 stores in different regions of the country. In more details, the twelve main constituents are pulses, condiments, eggs, cereals, dairy products, vegetables, fresh poultry, oils, sugar, canned fish, fruits and beverages. The index, which uses January 2023 as a base month with an inception value of 100, attained 129.9 during the month of September 2024, posting a monthly drop of 0.5% when compared to August’s figure of 130.6 and an annual increase of 4.9%. The Ministry commented that the damages inflicted to the local agricultural sector in the South continue to push the prices of eggs and fruits in an upward trajectory. On a monthly basis, the price of eggs and fruits reported the sharpest increase (13.7% and 2.8% respectively), while the prices of fresh poultry reported the largest drop of 8.8%. The following table captures the values, monthly change, and annual change in the index’s major constituents:

The Ministry commented that the prevailing war has resulted in a 1.3% monthly increase in the prices of essential foods in the South, compared to monthly contractions witnessed across all other governorates and particularly in the North (2.4% monthly drop) and Bekaa (2.0% monthly decrease) as depicted in the chart below: