Chile announced Wednesday that cruise vessels operating in Chilean waters will benefit from significant rebates in port access and docking operations with the implementation of recent modifications to the ruling on rates and charges from the Maritime Transport and Merchant Navy Department.
Mina Invierno, a major coal mine project to be located in Chilean Patagonia, has sparked new controversy in the Magallanes Region. The coal mine will be located on Isla Riesco, Chile’s fourth biggest island, just 80 miles from the region’s capital of Punta Arenas.
Chilean president Sebastián Piñera is expected next Friday in Punta Arenas airport en route to Antarctica with his Ecuadorean counterpart Rafael Correa, but will avoid all contact with locals, reports La Prensa Austral.
Seven days of protests and demonstrations, widespread international coverage, and dramatic warnings of violence in the Magallanes Region took their toll on the tourism industry in southern Chile’s Punta Arenas.
Chilean officials reached agreement Tuesday with the Citizens Assembly of Magallanes over an increase in natural gas prices that sparked a week-long general strike in the remote southern region, sources involved in the talks said.
Energy and Mining Minister Laurence Golborne insisted on the last proposal made by the Chilean government to stop manifestations which would imply a 3% increase in hydrocarbon.
The Governor of Tierra del Fuego announced on Radio 10 that they are awaiting the results of the meetings taking place in Chile to resolve the conflict in Punta Arenas which is affecting Argentine tourists.
Vladimiro Mimica, Mayor of Punta Arenas, expressed that the measures taken by Sebastián Piñera’s government to invoke the Security Law in order to stop protests in Magallanes due to gas price hikes were “an overaction and inopportune”.
THE announcement today by the organisers of the general strike in the Magallanes Region of Chile that there will be some “flexibility” in the road blocks currently in place outside the city of Punta Arenas will no doubt cause some easing of the pressure on the Chilean President to find a solution.
The southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas had its largest strike in decades Wednesday in response to a government proposal to increase the price of gas in the region by 20%.