Economy & Aid
Palestine's statistics bureau records prices falling 3.87 percent in Gaza
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Prices in the Gaza Strip fell by 3.87 percent in July against June, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported in the consumer price index it released on 13 August.
Across Palestine as a whole the index fell by 1.68 percent over the same month. The Gaza figure is more than twice the national fall, which is what a market looks like when supply arrives after a period in which almost none did.
An index measures what things cost, not what people can pay. Gaza's fall is measured against the extraordinary prices of a closed strip, where a sack of flour changed hands for sums no household income has ever matched, and a lower number this month says the sacks are arriving, not that anyone can afford them comfortably.
The bureau's own indicators keep the second half of the picture in view. Its published series puts unemployment in the occupied West Bank at 28.7 percent for 2025, and it released the West Bank labour force survey for the second quarter of 2026 on 11 August, two days before the price release.
The two numbers belong together. A falling price index in Gaza and a stalled labour market in the West Bank describe one economy whose supply lines and whose wages are decided in different places, and neither by Palestinians.
The bureau publishes the consumer price index monthly, with the regional breakdown for Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem in the full release.
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