International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva Tuesday announced that Chilean Economist Minister Rodrigo Valdés had been chosen to succeed the Brazilian Ilan Goldfajn as Regional Director of the global agency. Goldfajn left his post to become President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s top economic officials resigned on Thursday after the cancellation of a major mining project, weakening her center-left coalition before November elections. Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdes said in a news conference some members of Bachelet’s government had not shared his sense of urgency to spur growth and attract investment to the world’s top copper producer.
Chile's government has cut its forecast for 2017 economic growth to 1.5% from 2.25%, Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdes said on Monday as the long-awaited recovery remains elusive.
Chile's economy contracted for the first time in seven years in annual terms, as manufacturing and mining activity fell, potentially paving the way for the central bank to cut interest rates to spur growth. Economic activity fell 0.4% in October from the year-earlier month, the first annual contraction since October 2009, central bank data showed on Monday.
Under pressure from the public, Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet proposed changes to the most radical of all the economic reforms of former dictator Augusto Pinochet — the private pension system that inspired a wave of similar projects worldwide.
Evasion is one of the main weaknesses of the tax systems in the Latin America and the Caribbean economies, accounting for 320 billion dollars in 2014 - according to the Fiscal Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean 2016, launched by the UN regional office, ECLAC, in Santiago de Chile.
Pacific Alliance members' commitment to maintaining solid and orderly public finances, in a changing global economic environment is crucial to continue to attract investments, said Chile's Finance minister Rodrigo Valdes currently in New York with his peers from Peru, Colombia and Mexico, to promote the region.
Chile’s inflation rate rose to the highest this year in July as the Peso approaches its weakest level in more than a decade. Prices climbed 0.4% in the month, the National Statistics Institute said on its website Friday. Annual inflation accelerated to 4.6% from 4.4% the month before, while the central bank target is between 2% and 4%.
Chile will insist at the two-day Pacific Alliance summit which took off on Wednesday in Paracas, Peru, that a convergence with Mercosur is needed to ensure the integration of Latina America, and this is more evident now that both groupings face similar challenges such as falling prices for commodities, normalization of US monetary policy and an international context of slow growth.
In a move which has been interpreted as a right turn, economist Rodrigo Valdes was named as Chile's finance minister on Monday by President Michelle Bachelet, in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle in which four of her closest ministers were sacked or shifted into other roles. On Valdes' immediate to-do list is an upcoming 1.26 billion dollars international debt issue.