Can a copper adjustment deduct more revenue than the Treasury receives? In the fourth quarter of 2025, Codelco’s cyclical adjustment reached CLP 944,753 million against fiscal transfers of CLP 466,490 million, according to the Budget Office (Dirección de Presupuestos, Dipres). The difference matters because structural revenue, after removing the estimated effect of temporary prices, helps determine spending consistent with Chile’s fiscal target.
The fourth-quarter adjustment exceeded Treasury receipts
The fourth-quarter adjustment was more than twice Codelco’s transfers to the Treasury. The company’s adjustment is calculated from copper sales and prices, while the revenue from which it is deducted also depends on costs, taxes and dividends. Subtracting the two quarterly amounts produces negative structural revenue of CLP 478,263 million in that component, using the study’s preliminary figures (Dipres, 2026b, pp. 18–19).
Figure 1. The fourth-quarter 2025 adjustment was CLP 944,753 million against transfers of CLP 466,490 million in the study’s edition. Price panel: cash and reference copper prices, US cents per pound. Transfer panel: transfers and adjustment, billions of 2025 pesos. Source: Dipres, 2026b, tables 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6, pp. 18–19; author’s calculations. Download data (CSV).
Subtracting these amounts gives quarterly structural revenue of −CLP 478,263 million. For the full year, transfers of CLP 1,754,209 million less the CLP 1,506,258 million adjustment leave a positive CLP 247,951 million. The annual report revises the adjustment to CLP 1,680,448 million and leaves CLP 73,761 million. The subtractions reproduce the operation published in each edition (Dipres, 2026b, tables 4.5 and 4.6, p. 19; Dipres, 2026c, table II.8, p. 21).
The formula corrects sales prices, then deducts the result from fiscal transfers
The structural balance estimates the difference between central government revenue and expenditure if economic activity were at its trend level and copper at its reference price. The actual balance uses recorded revenue and expenditure. Subtracting the cyclical revenue adjustment from the actual balance gives the structural balance; this note calls the difference between them the gap and retains its sign (Dipres, 2026c, p. 5, equation 1).
Codelco’s adjustment multiplies physical sales by the difference between the company’s actual copper price and the reference price, converts tonnes into pounds and dollars into pesos, and sums the quarterly results. Here the actual price is Codelco’s, which need not equal the London quotation. Structural revenue is calculated by subtracting that adjustment from fiscal transfers, a different quantity from company sales (Dipres, 2026b, p. 8).
Higher costs can reduce transfers without changing the price adjustment if physical sales remain constant. Lower production can affect sales and reduce the adjustment, but there is no guaranteed proportional relationship between that reduction and the fall in payments to the Treasury. The Autonomous Fiscal Council (Consejo Fiscal Autónomo, CFA) identifies both the omission of costs from Codelco’s adjustment and the difference between adjusted sales and transferred fiscal revenue. Its April 2026 report also states that methodological review does not change its previous fiscal assessments (CFA, 2026, pp. 4 and 9–10).
Explorer. Select a year and, for 2025, an edition. Point to or focus a component to see its value and source. The table provides the same data. Open full screen.
This matters when translating the fiscal target into a spending envelope. For a given target, a lower estimate of structural revenue reduces the expenditure consistent with it; a higher estimate expands that envelope. If the copper correction remains large while company costs reduce Treasury receipts, the structural-revenue calculation can move without an equivalent change in the revenue actually available to finance the budget. The question for fiscal policy is how well that correction separates temporary copper-price gains from the company’s underlying capacity to contribute revenue (CFA, 2026, pp. 9–10).
A hypothetical example isolates the mechanism: if the company sells 100 pounds at US$5 and the reference price is US$4, the adjustment is US$100. If it transfers US$150 to the Treasury, structural revenue is US$50. If costs reduce the transfer to US$80 with prices and sales unchanged, the adjustment remains US$100 and structural revenue becomes −US$20. The example isolates the accounting mechanism.
Codelco explains over half the annual gap between the balances
The annual 2025 report gives an actual balance of −2.8% of gross domestic product (GDP) and a structural balance of −3.7%. Using the workbook’s precision, the gap rounds to 0.9 percentage points (pp). Codelco’s adjustment represents 56.6% of this gap; including large private mining companies’ taxes raises copper’s share to 81.0%. These are shares of the difference between the balances, not of the entire structural deficit (Dipres, 2026c, tables II.13 and II.14; author’s calculations).
The February figure is also reproducible. The fourth-quarter 2025 Public Finance Report (Informe de Finanzas Públicas, IFP 4T25) provisionally reported −2.8% and −3.55% of GDP. Table I.3.2 gives a Codelco adjustment of CLP 1,506,258 million and a total adjustment of CLP 2,503,183 million: their ratio is 60.2%, consistent with the 60% stated in box 2. May’s annual report gives CLP 1,680,448 million and CLP 2,968,522 million respectively. The revision changes both numerator and denominator; combining figures from the two editions would produce a different measure (Dipres, 2026a, pp. 12, 40 and 63; Dipres, 2026c, p. 23).
Component
2024 annual (% of GDP)
2025 preliminary (% of GDP)
2025 annual (% of GDP)
Non-mining taxes
0.083
0.077
0.158
Private mining
0.151
0.214
0.213
Gross copper: Codelco
0.199
0.445
0.494
Other adjustments
0.004
0.003
0.008
Net gap
0.436
0.739
0.873
Actual balance
−2.850
−2.814
−2.802
Structural balance
−3.286
−3.553
−3.675
Table 1. Codelco’s adjustment rises between the annual 2024 and 2025 reports; the preliminary column preserves February’s calculation. Unit: % of GDP; gap in pp. “Other” combines health contributions, molybdenum and lithium; the latter two are zero in these columns. Components are calculated before rounding. Sources by column: Dipres, BCA 2024, tables II.13 and II.14; IFP 4T25, table I.3.2, p. 40; BCA 2025, tables II.13 and II.14; author’s calculations. Download components (CSV); balances (CSV).
Figure 2. Codelco explains 56.6% of the annual 2025 gap, compared with 16.9% in 2023. Diverging bars stack positive components above zero and negative ones below. The gap is the signed sum, not the height of the positive stack. “Other” includes health contributions, molybdenum and lithium as applicable. Sources: Dipres, BCA 2021–2025, cyclical adjustment decomposition; author’s calculations. Download data (CSV).
The historical contribution changes with the cycle and the rules
In the annual 2024 report, Codelco explained 45.6% of a gap of 0.4 pp of GDP. In 2025, its share reached 56.6% of a gap of 0.9 pp. This comparison retains each year’s own published edition and therefore also incorporates revisions to statistical bases between publications. The change in shares describes those published results; it does not identify how much comes from prices, sales volumes or methodology alone (Dipres, 2025, tables II.13 and II.14; Dipres, 2026c, same tables; author’s calculations).
Figure 3. The gap between balances reached 0.9 pp of GDP in the annual 2025 report. Shading shows the difference between the balances. Markers identify methodological changes; reconstructed history is identified in the data. Sources: Dipres, BCA reports 2012–2025, balance tables and GDP annexes; author’s calculations. Download data and source locations (CSV).
Mining can explain more than the net gap when another adjustment offsets it. In 2022, the combined copper adjustment was 1.2 pp of GDP while the net gap was 0.9 pp: non-mining taxes and health contributions produced negative adjustments. In 2023, Codelco explained just 16.9% of the gap. These signs and offsets prevent a high percentage from being interpreted as a stable measure of copper’s weight in public finances (Dipres, 2023 and 2024, annual reports; author’s calculations).
Temporary tax measures do not all receive the same treatment. Measures that bring forward or postpone payments and reverse automatically are distinguished from other one-off revenue; the Autonomous Fiscal Council (Consejo Fiscal Autónomo, CFA) describes that distinction and the difficulties of identifying such measures. The 2015 report identifies special treatment for registration of capital held abroad. From 2023, the non-mining adjustment uses the non-mining GDP gap; from 2024, a prudential lithium adjustment is included and the mining royalty changes. The series assembles these rules without recalculating the past under a single methodology (CFA, 2021, pp. 48–51; Dipres, 2016, table II.10; Dipres, 2024, pp. 10 and 6, note 2).
What this note does not say
The quarterly example uses the study’s preliminary edition. It does not establish what share of costs is cyclical or provide a corrected official balance.
The 56.6% is a share of the difference between actual and structural balances, not of the entire structural deficit or of the deviation from a target.
The historical series combines methodological regimes and statistical revisions. Changes in its components do not identify a causal effect or allocate political responsibility.
Data and method
Sources were consulted on 23 October 2026. The annual series covers 2001–2025, with reconstructed history for 2001–2011 and the available annual edition for each subsequent year. The preliminary and annual estimates for 2025 are both retained. Each component is expressed against the nominal gross domestic product in its own edition, so the comparison does not mix price bases. Monthly or annual monetary amounts from different years are not compared.
Dipres (2026a). Informe de Finanzas Públicas, cuarto trimestre de 2025, febrero 2026. Document; accessed 2026-10-23.
Dipres (2026b). Ajuste cíclico de los ingresos por cobre bruto: desafíos pendientes. Estudios de Finanzas Públicas 2026/50, febrero 2026. Document; accessed 2026-10-23.
