MONETARY POLICY REPORT PRESENTATION BEFORE THE HONORABLE SENATE OF THE REPUBLIC  Mario Marcel Governor Central Bank of Chile 5 September 2018    The September 2018 Monetary Policy Report can be downloaded at http://www.bcentral.cl. The Spanish original prevails. Introduction Mr. President of the Senate, senator Carlos Montes, honorable senators, ladies, gentlemen, On behalf of the Board of the Central Bank of Chile (CBC), I am grateful for your invitation to present the Monetary Policy Report (IPoM). As usually in September of each year, this coincides with the report that, according to the Organic Law of the CBC, we must submit annually to the Senate. In compliance with this obligation, the Monetary Policy Report that I will be summarizing in a moment contains our view of the recent macroeconomic and financial developments in the Chilean and international economy, as well as their prospects and implications for the conduct of monetary policy. It also includes the Bank’s financial results of the first half of 2018, the results of the management of international reserves and a summary of the main decisions adopted by the Board this year to date. The Monetary Policy Report Incoming data this year has been showing greater than expected economic growth, and inflation consolidating its prospects of convergence to the target, in a context of positive surprises in several areas, an upward revision of potential growth and a faster closing of the activity gap.
15  Housing  120  60  Commercial  15  10  5  5  0  0  -5  -5  02  05  08  11  14  17  (3) Real data built with splice of CPI annual base 2013. (4) Horizontal dotted lines show average of last ten years of each series. Sourcee: Central Bank of Chile using SBIF information. Sourcee: Central Bank of Chile using SBIF information. 18  Figure 9 Inflation indicators (annual change, percent)  CPI  6  6  5  5  Services  4  4  3  3  2  2  1  CPIEFE (*)  Goods  0  1 0  -1  -1 14  15  16  17  18  (*) For definition, see Glossary. Sources: Central Bank of Chile and National Statistics Institute (INE).