According to the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), the monthly change in Lebanon’s consumer price index rose by 2.39% in December 2024, compared to an increase of 2.30% in November. On an annual basis, Lebanon’s CPI rallied by 18.12% to 7,061.07 in December 2024, compared to 5,978.13 in December of the year 2023, with the average annual inflation rate attaining 45.24% during the year 2024. 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 22.16% increase in the prices of food & non-alcoholic beverages (20.0% weight in the index), a 31.67% hike in housing prices (owner occupied; 13.6% weight in the index), an 8.96% surge in transportation prices (13.1% weight in the index), not to mention the 22.93% rise in healthcare prices (7.7% weight in the index). It is worth noting that restaurants & hotels prices soared by 17.48% y-o-y in December 2024 (2.8% weight in the index) on the back the Christmas and end of year holidays, and were accompanied by some 9.70% rally in the prices of recreation, amusement and culture (2.4% weight in the index) and some 9.41% 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 (2.99% and 1.99% respectively) in December. 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 December 2024, with the sharpest increase taking place in the North (3.79%), followed by the Beirut & Nabatieh (3.59% each), South (2.97%), Bekaa (2.07%), and Mount Lebanon (1.46%) regions.