SANTIAGO, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Chile’s state-owned Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, said on Wednesday it expects copper prices to fall in a year to between $3.80 and $3.90 per pound, down from prices currently just below $4.30 per pound.

"It's always very hard to forecast prices, especially in the short and medium term, but next year we will probably have prices slightly lower than this year," Codelco CEO Octavio Araneda told reporters during the inauguration of a virtual operations center.

The forecast is more pessimistic than that of Chilean copper regulator Cochilco, which said this week it sees copper prices falling to $3.95 per pound next year.

Politicians in Chile and Peru, the world's No. 1 and No. 2 copper producers respectively, are working to raise taxes on miners in order to capture more profits from those expected high prices.

Araneda added that Codelco's copper output in 2021 and 2022 should both be similar to that of 2020, when it produced 1.6 billion tonnes.