Empalme de Subclases del IPC entre 1989 y 2023

At the beginning of 2024, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) published the Consumer Price Index (CPI) with 2023 as a reference year. This new CPI series triggered a break with respect to its previous version (2018) –as occurred in previous CPI basket changes– that prevents the availability of continuous time series, which are relevant for the economic analysis through time. This document describes the process that allowed these time series to be constructed through the splicing at the CPI subclass level from 1989 to 2023, which served as an input –among other purposes– to update the components that constitute the CPI without volatiles and other core inflation measures used by the Central Bank of Chile. In particular, the criteria used to standardize the subclasses between the different CPI baskets are detailed, which experienced their greatest increase since the change in the structure of the CPI back in 2008. As a result of this process, continuous time series are provided to the public for each of the 172 subclasses of the CPI 2023. It should be noted that this causes limited differences in the evolution of annual inflation compared to the previous splicing (2018).