UPDATE 1-Chile consumer prices rise 1% in November, exceed estimates
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SANTIAGO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Chile's inflation reached 1.0% in November, government statistics agency INE said on Wednesday, accelerating from the 0.5% reported in the previous month and well above an expected 0.45% in a Reuters poll of economists.
The monthly figure took the Andean country's 12-month rate of consumer price increases to 13.3%, up from 12.8% last month and reverting a two-month drop.
The central bank's target range is 2% to 4%.
"This is a bad report, showing that inflation pressures remain relatively sticky," Andres Abadia, chief Latin American economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics, said.
INE said in a report that the rise was largely due to food and non-alcoholic beverages, which saw a rise of 1.7%, and transportation, which rose 1.3%.
The products that showed the biggest increases were air transport, gasoline, cured meats and others. The agency noted that "recreation and culture" prices dropped, with the largest being an 11.2% drop in tourist packages.
Abadia said he believes the "protracted disinflation trend" will emerge from Q1 onwards due to the "lagged effect of tighter financial conditions, the ongoing recession, and falling raw material prices, particularly energy prices."
Chile's central bank has raised the benchmark interest rate to contain inflation caused by an overheated economic recovery from COVID-19 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (Reporting by Gabriel Araujo and Fabian Andres Cambero; Editing by Steven Grattan and Alexander Smith)
