According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index rose by 2.02% in October 2024, compared to a decrease of 0.18% in September. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 15.68% (slowest increase since February 2020) to 6,741.31 in October 2024, compared to 5,827.35 in October of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate attaining 53.34% in the first ten 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 22.77% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 33.77% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), a 5.01% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), not to mention the 18.27% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index) and a 28.44% spike in communication prices (4.5% weight in the index). It is worth noting that restaurants & hotels prices soared by 21.04% y-o-y in October 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 12.34% rally in the prices of recreation, amusement and culture (2.4% weight in the index). It is worth mentioning that the prices of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index) was the only component of the CPI to witness an annual drop (4.56%) in October. 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 October 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in the Bekaa (3.19%), followed by the North (2.56%), Beirut (2.38%), Nabatieh (1.96%), Mount Lebanon (1.62%), and South (1.41%) regions as a result of the escalation of the war.