Customers waiting in line at a supermarket checkout in Metn. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros / L'Orient-Le JOUR)
Despite renewed hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel on 2 March, later paused by a cease-fire a week ago, Lebanon’s Central Administration of Statistics has updated national accounts and published official GDP figures for 2024.
The agency, which reports to the Prime Minister’s office, has also revised its estimates for 2020–2023 after earlier figures were deemed inaccurate.
The updated report provides more precise GDP data for the overhaul period that was marked by sharp exchange-rate volatility — from the collapse of the long-standing peg of 1,507.5 Lebanese Lira to the dollar to the introduction of the LL89,500 rate, in place since summer 2023, as Lebanon has gradually moved towards exchange-rate unification and partly stabilized the financial turmoil that has gripped the country since the 2019 crisis.
GDP figures for 2025 will take several months to compile, notably pending the transfer of all necessary data from the Finance Ministry to the statistics agency.
The Central Administration of Statistics estimates that Lebanon’s economy contracted by 5.2% in 2024, with nominal GDP reaching LL 2,728 trillion or the equivalent to $30.5 billion at an exchange rate of LL 89,500 to the dollar.
With its revised calculations, the Central Administration of Statistics now estimates that GDP contracted by 28.7% in 2020, compared with 25.9% as per the previous estimates.
It also estimated that it grew by 1.6% in 2021, down from 2.1% previously and 1.4% in 2022, compared with 1.8% previously.
The real growth rate for 2023 remains unchanged at 0.5%.
Lebanon’s 2023 nominal GDP
Other figures were also revised. Nominal GDP for 2022 is now estimated at LL624.4 trillion or the equivalent to $21.4 billion, implying an average exchange rate of LL 29,177 to the dollar over that period. Previous estimates had put it at LL 651.2 trillion, also equivalent to $21.4 billion, based on an average rate of LL 30,429 to the dollar.
The most significant revision concerns nominal GDP for 2023, now estimated at LL2,257.8 trillion, or $25.9 billion, based on an average exchange rate of LL87,173 to the dollar.
Earlier estimates had placed the figure nearly $6 billion higher, at LL2,760 trillion, or the equivalent to $31.6 billion, using an exchange rate of LL 87,341 to the dollar.
A source close to the matter pointed to an issue with the GDP deflator, or “implicit deflator,” an indicator used to measure price changes in the economy and express GDP in real terms.
“The gap between the deflator and the consumer price index (CPI) was significant, which explains the discrepancy between the previous 2023 GDP figures and the revised data,” the source said.
Methodological changes
The source said methodological changes introduced by the Central Administration of Statistics between 2025 and 2026 had produced “more credible, though still imperfect” results, due to the age of the statistical tools in use. This includes the CPI, which is based on “a basket of goods and services measured in the 2011 household budget survey.”
Further precision would require a new household expenditure survey to update the CPI to current reality — a major undertaking, particularly amid ongoing security instability — and a reassessment of the size of the informal economy, still estimated at 30%.
In its report, the Central Administration of Statistics provides further methodological detail, including a section on the GDP deflator. It explained that the indicator has moved “broadly in the same direction” as the consumer price index, “but with year-on-year differences due to the crisis and economic distortions.”
It also points to a sharp rise in the deflator in 2024 (+27.4%), alongside a modest increase in import prices (+2%).
Another methodological change concerns the real estate sector. The Central Administration of Statistics stopped estimating “annual volume changes on the assumption that the housing stock increased by a fixed 0.5% per year.”
It now draws on “observed data on the housing stock, broken down between housing used by their owners and rented housing, based on household surveys conducted in 2009–2010, 2012 and 2018,” among others.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour and was translated by Joelle El Khoury
