It is understood that the previous mitigants and supporting measures taken by central banks, including the Central Bank of Kuwait, are were to survive coronavirus induced health/economic crisis, and had been unwound once they were no longer needed. The challenges and risks seen today differ from those we experienced during the past two years, and require attention, monitoring of their impacts on our economy and banking and financial sectors, and applying the appropriate measures and policies to face them. Among such risks is deceleration of the global economic growth. IMF forecasts in July indicated a decline in growth to 3.2% in 2022 and 2.9% in 2023, driven by several shocks, most notably is deceleration of the American and Chinese economies, Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the geopolitical risks in Southeast Asia, the elevating tensions between China and Taiwan, continued supply and demand imbalance as a result of disruption of supply Page 3 of 4  chains of many basic commodities (mainly food and energy), risks of the continuous rise in global commodity prices and decade-old high inflation rates, especially in USA and major European economies. To contain the prolonged and far-reaching rise in inflation rates, many central banks tightened their monetary policies, by withdrawing the stimulus packages they had taken to withstand the negative impacts of the pandemic, reduced asset purchase programs, and increased interest rates. Such actions are expected to result in inevitable economic costs and we, however, hope that these would not adversely affect our economic sectors, banking and finance in particular.
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.