A Lebanese flag in front of the sea in Ain el-Mreisseh in the centre of Beirut, 22 Oct. 2024. (Credit: AFP)
After the 0.18 percent decrease in inflation in September – the first since February 2022 – the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which calculates price changes in Lebanese lira, rose again in October, increasing by 2.02 percent compared to the previous month.
Published by the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), this index also recorded an annual increase of 15.68 percent. However, in October, its annual increase surged to 32.92 percent. This reflects the relative slowdown in the rise in consumer prices, a trend that began several months ago in the wake of the stabilization of the Lebanese lira exchange rate.
This dynamic is partly due to the fact that the lira/dollar parity reached its current level (LL89,500 to the dollar) in October 2023, after several years of fluctuations that caused the national currency to lose more than 90 percent of its value.
More specifically, it is the prices of miscellaneous goods and services that contributed the most to this year-on-year increase, surging by 37.31 percent, followed by the prices of telecommunications, which increased by 28.44 percent. As for the prices of clothing and footwear, they shot up by 27.64 percent, while the prices of food and non-alcoholic beverages and those of restaurants and hotels increased by 22.77 percent and 21.04 percent, respectively. Only three categories saw single-digit price increases: transportation (+5.01 percent), education (+0.93 percent) and furniture (+0.42 percent).
Month-on-month, most price changes were below 1 percent in absolute terms. The only exceptions were clothing and footwear prices, which jumped by 8.55 percent, food and non-alcoholic beverages prices, which rose by 5 percent, alcoholic beverages and tobacco prices, which registered a 2.75 percent increase, and housing-related costs, up 1.35 percent. Only telecommunication prices recorded a monthly decline of 0.09 percent.
Still month-on-month, the most significant rise in the CPI was registered in the Bekaa at 3.19 percent, followed by North Lebanon, at 2.56 percent, Beirut, at 2.38 percent, Nabatieh, at 1.96 percent, Mount Lebanon, at 1.62 percent and, finally, South Lebanon, at 1.41 percent.
