SANTIAGO – The Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Chile registered an increase of 0.3% in the month of May, accumulating 1.3% so far this year and 2.0% to twelve months.
The inflationary data for the fifth month of 2018 was above the consensus of the market, whose estimate was a variation of 0.2%.
Thus, as reported by the Chilean National Institute of Statistics on Friday, in May, nine of the twelve divisions that make up the CPI basket contributed positive incidences in the variation of the indicator and three presented negative incidences.
Chilean man buys $400 smartphone with 127 pounds of avocados
The most important divisions were recreation and culture (2.0%), with an incidence of 0.116 percentage points (pp.); transportation (0.7%), with 0.085 point, and various goods and services (0.7%), with 0.051 point. The remaining divisions that had a positive impact totaled 0.107 pp.
According to the report of the INE, Tourist Package was the product that increased monthly increase, with a rise of 13.6%. This increase was explained by the term of the offers and promotions of the different travel agencies. To this was added the increase in the exchange rate, which affected mainly the international packages.
However, avocado was one of the products that stood out the most, since it rose 9.2% monthly, accumulating an inflationary increase of 23% so far this year and 19.1% to twelve months.
“The rise in the price was explained, among other reasons, by the lower supply of this product in the domestic market as a result of the season term, especially the Hass variety,” said the INE.
Regarding the main losses, lemon was the main protagonist in May, registering a fall of 23.6% in the month, accumulating 73.3% so far this year and -0.5% at twelve months. This negative variation responded to the greater availability of this citrus in the market, being in the middle of the production season.
