Manufacturing production in Chile posted its largest decline in over three years in May, weighed down by weak data from the fishing industry, data from the statistics agency INE agency showed on Tuesday.
The country’s manufacturing output was down 7.2% in the month on a yearly basis, the sharpest decline since November 2022. The data also declined more than expected, economists polled by Reuters anticipated a 2.5% decrease.
The decline was largely driven by a 10.9% year-over-year drop in food manufacturing due to lower fish production, INE said in a statement.
The fishing industry has faced “adverse weather conditions that reduced the availability of biomass in the usual fishing areas,” the agency added.
Moreover, copper output in the Andean nation , the world’s largest producer of the metal, fell 12.9% year-on-year in May to 423,623 metric tons.
(By Natailia Ramos and Aida Pelaez-Fernandez; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
