In general, as of September 2023, inflation has continued to fall, although it remains high, in a context where activity and demand have continued to advance in their adjustment process, cost pressures have been reduced and two-year inflation expectations stand at 3%.
From a subnational perspective, GDP grew in all regions, registering a rise of 2.4% for the country. It was estimated that in 2023 it would fall between -1.75% and -0.75% and increase between 2 and 3% in 2024. To a large extent, the downward correction for 2023 and 2024 responds to the new assumption for trend growth.
The Internal Revenue Service (SII) provides a size classification according to total annual sales of businesses. MSMEs concentrate 98.56% of companies according to SII records for the tax year 2021, excluding companies without information from the total universe of companies (i.e. excluding informal entities). MSMEs only accounted for 13.93% of total annual sales in UF.
According to the Quarterly Survey of Bank Credit Conditions of the Central Bank of Chile in Q4 2022, the conditions for the supply of credit to companies remain limited. The fraction of entities reporting more demanding loan standards for large firms and SMEs reached 39% and 36%, respectively, which is slightly lower than the figures reported during the previous quarter.
As in previous years, in 2022, Chile developed a solid economic relief plan through the so-called ‘Chile Apoya Plan”, an inclusive recovery plan including 25 measures to boost job creation, support smaller firms, and address the rise in the cost of living, among others.
In the case of smaller firms, support was channelled through Production Development Corporation (Corfo) and Technical Cooperation Service (Sercotec). These institutions sought to expand the coverage of support programmes for reactivation and the creation of special support instruments focused on tourism and culture sectors, with a special focus on gender parity and fostering cooperatives. The programmes allowed to assist more than 120 000 MSMEs and cooperatives from all regions of the country, for a total of USD 1 billion.
Additionally, for MSMEs a new stream to access credit guarantees was delivered by the creation of the Fogape Chile Apoya bill. Unlike the previous two Fogape bills (2020 and 2021), the state guarantee for loans is exclusively for MSMEs.
In 2021, the guarantee programmes granted by the Corfo, such as COBEX, Pro Inversión and FOGAIN, benefited almost 32,000 companies, reflecting an increase of 62.3% compared to the same period of 2021, granting more than 40,000 operations with Corfo Guarantees of more than USD 1.3 million. 89% of the guarantees were allocated to micro and small firms.
Venture capital funds, supported by Corfo programmes, continue to be an important source of financing for technology-based companies with high growth capacity. Although in 2020 there was a 14% drop in investments compared to 2019, mainly due to the effects of the pandemic, in 2021 and 2022, venture capital investment experienced a year-on-year growth of 30% and 23% respectively, growing from CLP 49 billion in investment in 2020 (about USD 63 million) to CLP 77 billion (about USD 89 million) in 2022.
In the case of non-bank financing, in 2022 the Corfo MiPymes Credit Programme allowed 82,000 companies to access financing through non-bank financial institutions, mobilising almost USD 255 million in credits, factoring and leasing.
In 2022, the Superintendence of Insolvency and Reentrepreneurship (Superir) worked on the modernisation project of regulation No. 20,720, with the aim of providing relief by reallocating resources and creating new procedures for micro and small enterprises in order to ease their experience.
Finally, the Commission for the Financial Market (CMF) has been leading the discussion of the Fintech bill. The bill was approved by the Congress in December 2022, and promulgated on January 4, 2023. The Law establishes a flexible regulatory framework for a number of companies that offer financial services but are not currently regulated or supervised by the Financial Market Commission. These include crowdfunding platforms, financial transaction platforms and custodians, intermediation and order routing.
Additionally, a new framework is created for the development of a regulated Open Finance System, in which Chilean citizens and firms will be able to share, with prior consent, their financial information, with the aim of accessing better products and services.