CAS GDP estimates align
with earlier InfoPro results

GDP in 2023 at $31.6 billion.

Bank Audi says that 2025 will be at $43 billion

The Central Administration of Statistics has released its official National Accounts for 2022 and 2023, placing nominal GDP at $31.6 billion in 2023 compared to $21.4 billion in 2022 and $20.1 billion in 2021. The figure is significantly higher than the International Monetary Fund’s estimate of $24 billion for the same year. The updated data introduces a new benchmark for economic analysis and signals a shift in how the size of the Lebanese economy is being assessed.

Bank Audi, in its weekly economic newsletter, said that based on updated expectations for real growth and inflation for 2024 and 2025, as calculated by the IMF and its own research team, nominal GDP should now reach around $43 billion in 2025. The bank explained that this represents a major revision from earlier projections that had estimated GDP at around $32 billion for that year. The statement reflects a wider reconsideration of Lebanon’s post crisis economic trajectory as new data comes into play. In an analysis of the CAS GDP report, Blominvest Bank said the 2023 GDP estimates by international institutions (such as World Bank and IMF) were undervalued and that the economy seems to be recovering at a faster pace than was forecasted. “This recovery is mainly attributed to the growth in private sector activities,” Blominvest said.

Last August, InfoPro published its own estimate for 2024 GDP at $40.3 billion. The research firm said at the time that its figure did not include an additional ten percent attributed to the unrecorded cash economy and the effect of rising values in the jewelry and precious metals trade. CAS has now confirmed that its calculation includes a 30 percent adjustment for cash activity that had not been captured in the datasets.

The InfoPro publication triggered a discussion among economists and business leaders. Many questioned whether IMF estimates were undervaluing the size of the economy by failing to fully account for transactions occurring outside the formal system. The new data from CAS, and forecast by Bank Audi, have effectively validated InfoPro’s earlier projections and shifted the discussion toward revising international forecasts.

Despite the nominal rebound, the economy remains significantly below pre crisis levels. The $31.6 billion GDP for 2023 represents only 59 percent of the 2019 level of $53.3 billion. In real terms, GDP at constant prices grew by only 0.5 percent in 2023 after modest expansions of 1.8 percent in 2022 and 2.1 percent in 2021. These slight improvements follow the sharp contraction of 26.8 percent in 2020. Real GDP remains at 76 percent of its 2019 level, highlighting the scale of the challenge ahead.

Inflation continues to distort nominal figures. The GDP deflator reached 321.8 percent in 2023 after 151.1 percent in 2022 and 172.2 percent in 2021. This surge in prices inflates the value of output in dollar terms while masking the limited real growth achieved.

The new national accounts confirm that Lebanon’s economy is expanding in nominal size faster than previously recorded, but they also underline the fragility of that growth against a backdrop of persistent inflation and only marginal gains in real production.