MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Four Chilean families concentrate 47% of assets in Santiago’s stock exchange

The Luksic and Piñera families among the richest

Four families in Chile concentrate 47% of the assets of companies quoting in the Santiago Stock exchange according to a book titled “Towards an inclusive growth; economic policy proposals” written by economist Luis Eduardo Cerda.

The book which addresses wealth concentration in Chile names the four families: Andronico Luksic; Anacleto Angelini; Eduardo Matte and current president Sebastián Piñera, whom together made up 9.16% of Chile’s GDP in 2004 and 12.49% of GDP in 2008.

To the 47% of assets in the stock exchange, according to Cerda must be added critical market concentrations in other areas such as pension funds’ management, the financial system and the companies involved in private medical attention.

To eyes of international analysts Chile has a very successful image for having achieved sustained strong growth rates in the nineties which led to a considerable reduction of poverty and an improvement in the life quality of most of the Chilean population, but “very few have looked into “what has happened with wealth and the distribution of national income”, points out Cerda.

The economist goes further and argues that “little has happened in that field”. According to the Gini index (a UN development program equality measuring system) “the rate remains virtually unmoved since the mid eighties until 2009”.

For the eight economists who contributed with the research for the report the degree of wealth concentration and inequality has much to do with the dynamics of the Chilean economy and they come up with four proposals.

Experts propose promoting competition within a strict regulatory framework, a cluster policy in activities linked among each other inclusive of small and medium sized companies. Another issue is education, but “education is not enough, health and jobs are also needed” so as to diminish inequalities.

Finally the fourth proposal is social policies. “Classic liberal economists believe education is enough, we insist with health and jobs, if we want to have results”, underlined Cerda.