The Chilean peso rallied against the US dollar today, though the gains were limited as Chile’s central bank reduced its forecast for nation’s economic growth this year.
The Central Bank of Chile released its quarterly Monetary Policy Report today. In the report, the central bank lowered the growth forecast for 2017 from 1%-2% range to 1%-1.75%. Despite that, the policy makers expected that no additional monetary stimulus should be required in the near future. The central bank has already loosened its policy considerably, lowering the main interest rate by 100 basis points since the start of this year.
Additionally, peso was under pressure from the fall of prices for copper. Chile is the world’s biggest exporter of the industrial metal, thus moves of copper prices tend to have a strong impact on Chile’s economy and currency. On top of that, the effect of the strike at Escondida copper mine continues to be felt even though the strike itself has ended back in March.
USD/CLP slipped by 0.13% to 668.65 as of 18:34 GMT today.
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