Latin America's economies are diverging lately. Unlike the positive trends seen in Brazil and Peru recently, Chilean growth is facing a few wobbles; a pickup in business bankruptcies is the latest data point.

We've charted company liquidations over the course of the past five calendar years. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic-era bankruptcies of 2020 and 2021 stand out. After another bump in bankruptcies last year, 2024 saw relatively few companies shut down – but liquidations crept higher in October, reaching 71 – a one-year high

This is one of CEIC's newest datasets. It offers granular data by region over time. (As we can see in our second chart, the greatest number of bankruptcies by far are found in the "metropolitan" region, i.e. greater Santiago.)

Chile’s GDP had accelerated in Q3, with the quarter-on-quarter growth rate returning to positive territory at 0.7% (seasonally adjusted). This boosted year-on-year growth to 2.3%, up from 1.6% in Q2. However, Finance Minister Mario Marcel recently said that Chile's economic growth for 2024 is expected to fall short of the government’s 2.6% forecast.

What's going on? We've charted measures of confidence to gain insights into Chile's mixed outlook.

Waning optimism in the key mining sector is a factor: the Business Confidence Index (BCI) for the mining industry fell to 59.9 in October from 64.9 in September. While readings above 50 indicate net optimism among executives survey, this drop was still enough to keep overall BCI for all sectors little changed, and in pessimistic territory (46.3).

Prices for copper, Chile's dominant export, might well have a long-term bull case due to booming electric-vehicle and artificial-intelligence technologies. But in the shorter term, China – Chile's no. 1 customer – faces the prospect of demand-dampening tariffs from president-elect Donald Trump.

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