Banks weigh in on the economic impact of Chile’s constitutional reform proposal

The draft of Chile’s new constitution is almost ready.

After months of debates and votes across various committees and the Constituent Assembly floor, a total of 499 articles were approved for inclusion.

Now, the draft is in the hands of the recently created Harmonization Committee, an ad-hoc body designed to weed out inconsistencies and redundancies in the text and deliver a final, polished proposal.

At the same time, another two groups will take care of supplementary aspects of the new Constitution: the Preamble Committee will write introductory texts before articles, while the Transitory Regulations Committee takes charge of transition rules between the old and new charters, working out how to implement some of the novel draft’s most complex provisions — such as eliminating the Senate.

Overall, however, the basic outline of the new text is already clear, and Chile is beginning to discuss its contents ahead of the September 4 exit referendum which will decide whether the Constitution is put into use or not.

Among those analyzing the final draft are investors and bankers, who have favored Chile as a business-friendly hub over the last four decades but are now raising questions about how much this...