Chile: confirmed that the consumer price index had been manipulated during the three months of 2018

The National Institute of Statistics of Chile confirmed that the calculations were manipulated to get the Consumer price index (CPI) August, September and November 2018, but having said that, chess has not changed annual inflation.

The technical audit carried out by the INE – which examined the data from 2016 to date – concluded that "There are indications of manipulation only in 3 months that affected up to 626 prices in a given month, out of a total of more than 150,000 records taken for the calculation of the CPI ".

The erroneous adjustments took place in August, September and November 2018 and no evidence that could call into question the results of the other months was found., as the INE explains in his statement.

In August of last year, a overestimation of 0.1 percentage point of the CPIresulting in a change of 0.2% when the effective change was 0.1%.

In September, price treatment had no impact on the published CPI, to make up for what happened in August, setting inflation at 0.3%.

Meanwhile, in October, although there is no sign of manipulation, an underestimate was generated due to the September change and a CPI of 0.4% was reported, which should have been 0.5%. While in the penultimate month of the year, the recorded manipulation did not affect the CPI, which remained motionless.

The annual CPI has not been altered by these failures and there is still no badumption about the origin or the reason of the faults detected.

Chile closed 2018 with inflation of 2.6%, below the government target set at 3%.

There are days, The detection of alleged infractions led the INE to dismiss the head of the Price Department and to present the case to the prosecutor's office.

The scandal hits hard INE Chilean, promoted nationally and internationally for its transparency and reliability.

However, during the first government of the current president Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014), a failed census was ignored for making serious mistakes.

(With information from AFP)