The Consumer Price Index (CPI) down 0.5% in January in relation to the previous month and cut its year-on-year rate to 6%, five tenths below the December rate (6.5%), due to the cheapening of the light.
With the January data, the year-on-year CPI chains its thirteenth consecutive positive rate, according to advanced data published this Monday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which is released today for the first time in the new 2021 base.
According to Statistics, in the interannual behavior of the CPI for January highlights the drop in electricity prices, compared to the rise registered in January 2021.
The INE incorporates in the CPI data preview an estimate of underlying inflation (without unprocessed food or energy products), which increased three tenths in January, to 2.4%, which is more than three points per below the general CPI rate.
Monthly decline of 0.5%
In monthly rate, the CPI broke a five-month promotion streak registering in January a decrease of 0.5% compared to December 2021, its biggest drop since last July.
In the first month of 2022, the Harmonized Consumer Price Index (IPCA) placed its interannual rate at 6.1%, five tenths less than in December.
For its part, the advance indicator of the IPCA fell by 0.9% in monthly rate. The INE will publish the final CPI data for January in mid-February.
The changes implied by the new base
Statistics has highlighted that with the implementation of the new base methodological novelties are incorporated that improve the precision of the indicator, as well as changes in the composition of the shopping basket and a new weighting structure.
The base change is a process that is carried out every five years to renew the CPI by adapting it to changes in household consumption patterns and incorporating methodological improvements.
Thus, the base CPI 2021 incorporates new treatments for monitoring the prices of clothing and for processing the lack of price, and updates the list of subclasses, so that 24 subclasses disappear from the CPI calculation and two new ones are incorporated.
The most notable changes in the configuration of the basket are the incorporation of hygienic masks and the subscription to the ‘online’ press. Items such as the image player, the portable player or the compact-disc and the DVD, among others, disappear from the basket.
As a result of these adjustments, the CPI base 2021 shopping basket now has 955 items (of which 462 are traditionally collected and the rest are collected through ‘scanner data’), compared to 977 in the previous base ( with 480 traditional pickup).
The 2021 base CPI includes a new weighting structure that more accurately represents household consumption patterns, according to the INE.
Statistics has postponed the incorporation of the liberalized electricity market in the calculation of the CPI until the information that the electricity companies have to supply with a sufficient level of detail and with the necessary technical criteria is obtained.