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Colombia’s economy will have expanded 1.1% in 2023, hit by high interest rates and inflation pressures, and recovery this year and next will be slow, a Reuters survey showed on Thursday.

The projections by 23 analysts for last year’s figure fluctuated between 0.8% and 1.4%.

The modest expansion would compare with growth of 7.3% in 2022, as the country bounced back from low expansion during the coronavirus pandemic.

The median of the survey is close to the 1% estimate of the central bank’s technical team.

Expansion will have reached 1% in the fourth quarter, the poll showed, compared with the same period of 2022, a contrast to contraction of 0.3% seen in the third quarter of last year.

«We saw a slight recovery in the primary activities derived from worries about the El Nino phenomena and some speculation about food prices,» said Wilson Tovar, head of economic investigations at Acciones y Valores brokerage. Construction and manufacturing struggled to recover, he said, though they were buoyed up by public spending.

The DANE statistics agency is set to publish gross domestic product figures on February 15.

The economy will grow 1.2% this year due to still-high interest rates and inflation, the survey showed, despite cuts by the central bank’s board to borrowing costs that have taken them to 12.75%.

The central bank technical team said this week it projects a higher interest rate than that predicted by the market, in an effort to take inflation down toward the 3% target.

Twelve-month inflation was 8.35% in January.

Growth will reach 2.65% in 2025, the survey said.