Coronavirus: Chile implements $ 12 billion stimulus package

Chileans line up in front of a Valparaiso supermarket where an employee checks the body temperature of customers on June 12, 2020. ADRIANA THOMASA CARBALLO / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

On the night of Saturday to Sunday in Chile, the right-wing government and part of the opposition reached an agreement on a 12 billion dollar stimulus plan and an increase in emergency social assistance. At the height of the epidemic, and after hunger protests in the country last month, the government is committed to digging into its sovereign wealth funds to help the country absorb the economic shock caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

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With our correspondent in Santiago, Justine Fontaine

With an unemployment rate at its highest since 1985 in the capital region, and faced with a vertiginous fall in economic activity in April, the government and the opposition wanted an ambitious recovery plan for Chile.

The right-wing majority in power, still influenced by neoliberal theories applied under the dictatorship of General Pinochet, have so far refused to increase emergency social assistance, which remained well below the poverty line. This is one of the reasons why some Chileans demonstrated in late May in the suburbs of Santiago, because they could not afford to eat.

Finally, Chile will therefore draw from its sovereign funds (money accumulated in particular thanks to copper mines in the country), to set up a vast two-year recovery plan.

Read also: Coronavirus in Chile: the Minister of Health resigns at the height of the epidemic

Social assistance should increase by 50% to soon reach the equivalent of 110 euros per person, and benefit around one million additional Chileans. Insufficient social measures, however, to convince the leftmost wing of the opposition, which will not participate in this agreement.

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  • Chile
  • Coronavirus
  • Health and Medicine
  • Economy

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