The National Petroleum Company (Enap) is expected to announce another increase of around $40 per liter in benchmark gasoline prices this afternoon, according to La Tercera, citing analysts' estimates. It would be the fifth consecutive increase. Enap is Chile's state-owned oil company and reports the prices at which it sells fuel to distributors each week.
The figure is not yet official. It is an analysts' projection reported by that outlet ahead of Enap's announcement, and no other source has confirmed it.
Ahead of the announcement, two former Central Bank presidents, Mario Marcel and Rodrigo Vergara, analyzed the effect of the increases on the economy. They spoke at a discussion organized by the Center for Public Studies (CEP), a think tank based in Santiago.
Vergara, now a senior researcher at CEP, pointed to household consumption, which he said accounts for a third of domestic demand. "The drop is brutal and happens in March, which is why it is hard not to link it directly to the so-called gasoline price surge," he said.
The economist added that the blow came as consumer expectations had been rising sharply, partly because of the political change. In his view, that optimism was fragile, making the shock "tremendously strong" and difficult to reverse.
Marcel, also a former Minister of Finance, explained why gasoline weighs so heavily on people's mood. According to him, inflation has more influence on perceptions of the economy than activity or employment. And people do not look at the CPI (Consumer Price Index), but at prominent prices.
"The most common one everywhere in the world is the price of fuel," he said. Put simply: even if the CPI rises only slightly, if filling the tank costs much more, people feel it in their wallets immediately and the sense of crisis grows.
Asked what he would have done with Mepco (Fuel Price Stabilization Mechanism, which acts as a buffer to smooth out price jumps), Marcel recalled 2022. That year, he faced a major fiscal adjustment, the oil shock and rising food prices caused by the war in Ukraine, and still applied Mepco to avoid adding pressure on consumers.
For the current situation, Marcel said he would have changed the adjustment limit. With the cap at $30 per liter, the adjustment "was going to be too slow." He proposed doubling that figure, which he said would have reduced the fiscal cost somewhat and given people more time to adapt.
The final gasoline price will become clear when Enap publishes its new benchmark prices this afternoon. If the estimate of $40 per liter proves correct, it would be the fifth consecutive increase.
