In addition, inflation figures have increased further in several countries, but, the same as in Chile, the widespread concerns we saw early this year over the future of the inflation scenario have eased. In the external scenario, unlike previous Monetary Policy Reports, this time projections match market consensus, because the latter were revised downward. On aggregate, world growth forecasts for the next two years are unchanged from March. However, there are significant changes in its breakdown. World GDP will grow slightly more than 4% in the two-year period 2011–2012, with a milder expansion of the United States and Japan, which will be offset by somewhat faster growth in emerging economies (table 2). Perceived weakness in the developed world has affected commodity prices, which stopped increasing as fast as they had since mid 2010, and there have been some revisions in the margin. They are still in record highs, however, mainly obeying to strong demand in emerging economies and some supply-side problems (figure 3). The WTI oil barrel hit a high of $ in late April, then it fell, and at the closing of this Report it is somewhat below $ Food prices, according to the FAO aggregate index, peaked in February, and have  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  fluctuated around that level since. The baseline scenario assumes that commodity prices will remain fairly constant over the next two years. The interest rate differential between developed and emerging economies has continued to widen at all maturities (figure 4).
In the scenario we consider to be the most likely given present-day and expected conditions, the larger part of the adjustment to the MPR we began in June 2010, and which has amounted to an increase of 475 basis points, has already been completed. In this scenario, we use as a working assumption that the MPR will be within the range of values that have historically been considered neutral. However, we must keep in mind that the behavior of both the domestic and the external economy in the past several years may have changed those ranges, introducing a high degree of uncertainty about the true short-term level of the neutral MPR. All in all, exactly how far and when we will take the MPR in the current cycle is something the Board will be analyzing with incoming information on the evolution of the Chilean economy and the international scenario. It is worth pausing for a few moments to take a look at the evolution of the world economy. In our most likely scenario, we estimate that the world will continue to add momentum to Chile’s GDP growth, although gradually declining in the coming quarters. However, as I already mentioned, there are important risks. Developed economies may enter a stage where output fails to pick up and new economic policy efforts are needed to boost growth. The big problem they are facing is the exhaustion of their traditional policy tools.