Chile would remain an economic star in Latin America

By Odalis F. Marte 

@ofmarte

After the social unrest in 2019, the Chileans found an institutional way to try to resolve the underlying situations that motivated such  discontent in a large segment of the population. That’s good news.

Furthermore, they elected a constitutional assembly from most of the social sectors of the Chilean society giving it more legitimacy than it would have had otherwise. Also, many of the members of the constitutional assembly are well-known professionals who are not traditional politicians or members of the ruling elite.

Despite the fear of some groups in Chile, it is reasonable to expect that the new constitution would establish some social rights that are more in line with European democracies than with the Chicago school, which would not necessarily affect the country-risk for Chile. Nonetheless, divisions in Chilean society would remain in the medium term as the adaptation process to the news political reality takes place, so the probability of the occurrence of some sort of social unrest remains moderate over that time horizon. But I expect Chile to remain an investment-grade country as the economy improves along with its political system.

Despite the struggle Latin America has gone through, Chile has fared relatively well as the country achieved a high rate of vaccination against Covid-19. The country’s sanitary system proved to be able to face the challenges of the desease.

As the Chilean economy is substantially open, and the world economy recovers, it is expected that the country’s GDP growth would accelerate, especially as the demand for commodities expands and prices increase. Chile would have enough income to overcome its fiscal challenges in the short term.

I expect Chile to be upgraded in terms of country-risk assessment taking into account different aspects: its proven capacity to reach some sort of consensus among its society helps its political stability in the long term, its economic resilience against the pandemic shock, as well as its favorable economic performance growth perspective.

                                                                https://www.oecd.org/economy/chile-economic-snapshot/