translated from Spanish: Government maintained expectation of 1% economic growth for 2019

Finance Minister Ignacio Briones reiterated that “we are at a difficult economic moment,” after the 3.3% contraction in the national economy was known during November, and said that government policies in this area aim to “threaten the impacts of this (social) crisis on the economy as much as possible.
Although the drop was less than -4% expected by analysts, Briones rated it as “very significant” and assured that the decline “should not make us lose our perspective.”
Briones further said that the government maintains projections of economic growth of 1% for 2019, and a range between 1% and 1.5% with a central value of 1.3% by 2020.
These figures, the head of the tax wallet, indicated are “well below expectations before 18 October” and argued that it “demonstrates the consequences that the phenomenon (social crisis) has had on economic activity.”
Minister Briones also raised the need to establish policies to “go to employment protection” and although he recalled that the figure of 6.9% unemployment released on Monday by the INE “does not offer large variations and was below expectations , it is important to monitor the issue”, due to the increase in the number of disengagements for the needs of the company that has occurred after the social outburst.
Read also: Unemployment reached 6.9% in the September-November quarter
On the fall of the Mining Imacec, which recorded 5.1%, Briones stated that it “does not directly obey the crisis” and that these figures “should be isolated and not associated with the phenomenon we are discussing”.

Original source in Spanish