If this is confirmed, as I think probable, the overall picture is of an economy expanding around or a little above its potential rate of growth. The combination of lower rates of productivity and labour force growth mean that potential is growing at around 1.5% about a percentage point below its pre-crisis rate. 9  Trying to make very precise forecasts of the output gap is a fool’s errand but the balance of evidence is there appears to be little slack left in the labour market and little spare capacity in firms. Unemployment is at 4.2% – pretty much the MPC’s revised estimate of the natural rate. Underemployment is low. 10  Non-price measures – for example, surveys of recruitment difficulties and measures of churn in the  labour market – have been signalling increasing labour market tightness for a number of years. 11  Whole economy regular pay growth reached 2.5% in December and has stayed above that level through the first few months of 2018 though there has been a slight slowing in the latest – April – data (from 2.9% in March to 2.8% in April). The higher frequency measure of pay growth, 3 month on 3 month growth, has been above 2.5% for 11 months between last May and March this year – the longest run of such consistent wage growth since the crisis (Chart 7).
This development has been supported by the development of the derivatives market, in which Pension Funds have been key counterparts as well. Banking regulation, in turn, have result in limited currency mismatches at the bank level, which have made the introduction of new regulation to deal with FX risk unnecessary, as we have observed in many emerging market economies after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). While may be true that other emerging economies have been increasingly active in the implementation of CBM in their banking systems, in Chile, we have followed a different approach to deal with FX risk at the banking level. This approach has been mainly characterized by limiting banks’ direct FX-currency exposure (limited currency mismatches) as part of our overall capital requirements for market risk purposes. Also, by acknowledging the potential indirect FX risk through the credit provisioning requirements. In fact, in Chile, the main regulatory changes introduced has been the recent modification of the General Banking Law (GBL), which constitutes a major step forward for the local banking industry, in that it will contribute to reducing the gap with international regulatory standards established under Basel III. The new regulatory  Page 2 of 12  Central Bank of Chile September 2019  framework raises important challenges for the industry in terms of compliance with the new, more demanding solvency requirements, especially for entities with a smaller capital cushion. High-level Policy Seminar on Integration or Fragmentation?