According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index rose by 2.30% in November 2024, compared to an increase of 2.02% in October. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 15.38% (slowest increase since February 2020) to 6,896.31 in November 2024, compared to 5,976.83 in November of the previous year, with the average annual inflation rate attaining 48.62% in the first eleven 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 23.19% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 30.73% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), a 5.39% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), not to mention the 23.02% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index). It is worth noting that restaurants & hotels prices soared by 18.90% y-o-y in November 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) and were accompanied by some 10.85% rally in the prices of recreation, amusement and culture (2.4% weight in the index) and some 5.21% increase in the price of housing – water, electricity, gas & other fuels (11.8% weight in the index). It is worth noting that communication prices (4.5% weight in the index) and furnishings, household equipment & routine household maintenance (3.8% weight in the index) were the only two components of the CPI to witness annual drops (0.33% and 1.46% respectively) in November. 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 November 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in Mount Lebanon (3.04%), followed by the North (2.33%), South (1.40%), Beirut (1.35%), Bekaa (0.98%), and Nabatieh (0.89%) regions as a result of the escalation of the war.