MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean exporters howling: US dollar falling to 480 pesos

Asoex: “It's not a question of expanding, but of survivint”.

With the US dollar in free fall the Chilean Association of Exporters, ASOEX have called on the country's authorities so that “once and for all they understand the situation that vast sectors of the Chilean economy are experiencing, particularly small and medium enterprises which represent a significant number of jobs”.

Asoex insists in the urgent need that steps are taken to prevent the US dollar from falling, which has considerably diminished the country's export and import substitution sectors capacity. "It's not a question of expanding, but of survivint". The US dollar dropped this week to 487 Chilean pesos, its lowest in eight years pushed by the soaring price of Chile's main export commodity copper and prospects of higher interest rates in Chile to contain inflation. However Santiago monetary experts anticipate that the exchange rate most possibly will continue to deteriorate for the US dollar reaching 480 Chilean pesos. Asoex demands fiscal and monetary policies be implemented to help alleviate the adverse conditions for exporting (higher costs in Chilean pesos and less income in US dollars), otherwise "the government will be made responsible" for not extending to the productive sectors of the economy the tools to convert Chile into an agribusiness power in the coming years, "as well as for the unemployment generated mainly in those provinces highly dependent on labor intensive industries". Asoex describes the current monetary policy as "inconsistent" since the Central Bank did intervene when the US dollar (was soaring against the Chilean peso) and has been reluctant to act when "the US dollar is at an abnormally low level".