Fynsa
During the week, the National Accounts for the third quarter were published, which provide a more consolidated view of the country's recent growth figures. The reader may not be aware of it, but the Imacec is an estimate of the behavior of the activity of a given month, which is prepared with partial information, containing an accounting part and another part that comes from models. However, it is a very good estimate, and in general it does not undergo major corrections when the National Accounts are published.
But this is not the only advantage of these statistics, since in addition to being a more complete source of information, they are also much more disaggregated than the Imacec. In fact, it is published quarterly using the supply and demand sectors method. The former considers GDP as the sum of all value added coming from the different economic sectors (such as mining, trade, services, etc.), while the latter considers utilization, such as private consumption, investment, exports, etc.
Thus, we learned that, during this period, the economy expanded 1.6% compared to the third quarter of last year, which was below what was expected considering the preliminary Imacec figures (1.8% YoY). Beyond this, however, it seems to us that there are still positive aspects to highlight. First, that growth continues to be dominated by domestic demand, both private consumption and investment, as has been the trend during 2025, unlike what we saw in previous years. Within consumption, there continues to be a normalization in services, which continued to lag relatively behind goods after the social outbreak and the Covid19 pandemic. Secondly, although the better performance of investment seems to continue to be closely linked to mining and energy, its persistence could give way to improvements in other sectors, considering the productive intertwining that these areas have with the rest of the economy.
However, we believe that the figures should be viewed with cautious optimism. The good performance of domestic demand was offset by a decline in net exports. In other words, we need to bring from the rest of the world the goods and services we consume and the productive factors with which we invest. This in itself is not a problem, since, for example, it could be a reflection of a foreign investment boom or a one-time event that by accounting had to be written down completely in a short period. But the data tell us that this is only part of the story, since, looking at the current account deficit, we realize that, in addition to non-resident investment in Chile, companies and the local government have borrowed, in addition to having liquidated assets they held abroad.
However, while these are good figures on net, they are not sustainable over time, or at least not without generating macroeconomic imbalances elsewhere, as we saw in the recovery from the pandemic. In any case, a situation of that magnitude is not contemplated in our baseline scenario, which projects output growth of 2.3% for 2025, similar to what we expect for 2026, which is within our long-term capabilities.
