Treasury Minister on Chile Day: “Private, national and foreign investment will be key to making new opportunities happen”

Chile’s Treasury Minister, Mario Marcel, is in London, United Kingdom, participating in the first day of XI Chile Day 2022. The minister’s schedule started early this Monday with an interview for Bloomberg in which he emphasized that the government will stay on the path of fiscal consolidation during 2023, while social aid will be established.  

He then spoke at the Chile Day Plenary Session on “Development and Prospects of the Chilean Economy,” which he divided into three main areas: recent macroeconomic developments and medium-term prospects; the reform agenda; and future expectations and emerging opportunities for investors. 

On the first point, the minister recalled that a strong and punctual response from the government in fiscal-economic matters has helped correct the balance from 2021. He also highlighted the measures that have been implemented in the country, such as Plan Invirtamos en Chile (Let’s Invest in Chile), as well as future measures to boost productivity. “Recent and ongoing measures will open up new opportunities for competition in financial services. Private, national and foreign investment will be key to making new opportunities happen. This is something that the government will not be doing alone, because it will require a strong contribution from the private sector to bring innovation, technological development and competition to the Chilean economy,” the minister stated. 

He also specified that “these investments, research, development and innovation can take advantage of the incentives recently announced by the government, along with the productivity agenda that will be released soon. In summary, Chile is well advanced in macroeconomic rebalancing, while also tackling reforms in a responsible way, and is meeting new opportunities in which local and foreign investors can participate and join what I think will be a new stage of development for our country.” 

Minister Marcel also emphasized, “our reform agenda aims to build a new social contract and lay the foundations for sustainable and inclusive growth. And all the main components of this agenda – whether progressive personal income tax, multi-pillar pension systems, social care and public health – can be seen as the universal basic building blocks of social, protective and innovation systems in other market economies around the world.” 

He continued, “there is nothing radical in what we are doing in Chile. The fact that potential economic growth has been falling for 15 years and that productivity has stagnated for the last decade suggests that there is something wrong with our productive development, with our economic development, and we need to address that.” 

For the last point of his presentation, Minister Marcel presented the 28 measures of Plan Invirtamos en Chile. These measures will ensure that “after more than a decade of declining potential growth and stagnant productivity, Chile can widely benefit from technological change and the greening of the world economy.” 

After the presentation, the treasury minister had a conversation with the Latin America editor of the Financial Times, Michael Stott, in which he addressed the local and global economic situation, and the comparative advantages that Chile has for green hydrogen development. 

During the afternoon, Minister Marcel visited the London Metal Exchange (LME) and gave a keynote speech at the London Business School on the “Attractiveness of Chile: Challenges and Opportunities for attracting talent.” 

He also held a bilateral meeting with Teck Resources, as well as private meetings with groups of investors. 

Tomorrow begins with the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Financial Sector Development between the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Chile and His Majesty’s Treasury of the United Kingdom, following negotiations that took place between 2021 and 2022. It aims to identify potential avenues of cooperation between both agencies in the financial sector. Some of the areas that the agreement seeks to promote are: fintech and open finance; financial services; financial inclusion and education; regulation and supervision of the financial sector; and sustainable finance. 

To close his trip, the minister will take part in activities parallel to Chile Day. He will meet with investors in a meeting organized by Santander Bank, before bilateral meetings with the Oxbridge Capital investment fund, the CEO of Australis Seafoods, Andrés Lyon, and the chairman of Joyvio Food, Chen Shaopeng.