La Jornada: Central Bank of Chile lowers growth projection this year to one percent

Santiago. The Chilean economy continues to slow and projected growth for 2026 now stands at just one percent annually, the Central Bank announced in its June monetary policy report.

The report reduced the range of gross domestic product (GDP) growth from the 1.5 to 2.5 percent estimated in March to between one to 1.75 percent.

The monetary authority thus definitively discards the optimistic calculations of months ago, which placed the potential GDP expansion even at around 2.5 percent this year.

The estimates ended up collapsing due to the negative results of the activity during the first quarter of the year, when it fell 0.5 percent compared to the same period in 2025, due in large part to the “poor performance of sectors linked to natural resources, such as copper mining, agriculture and fishing, added to lower incoming tourism last summer,” the agency said.

Of course, it raised the growth projection for 2027 to between 2 and 3 percent, from the previous range of 1.5 to 2.5 percent annually, due to better investment expectations; Meanwhile, for 2028 it was between 1.75 and 2.75 percent.

Regarding inflation, the Central predicts that this year it will close at 4.2 percent annually, two tenths above previous estimates, and would return to values ​​close to 3 percent annually in the second quarter of 2027.

Regarding the investment measure known as gross fixed capital formation, there is a decline from 4 percent in March to 2.2 percent now, which “is influenced by the negative surprise of the first quarter and the less favorable evolution of the data known at the margin,” he noted.

In the middle of the week, the Central Bank maintained the monetary policy interest rate at 4.5 percent annually, a value in force since December 2025.