A wad of business cards from Mexican businessmen left the Minister of Economy, Nicolás Grau, and his team at the breakfast led by President Gabriel Boric last Wednesday, on the first day of the tour to Mexico.
Everyone wanted to meet with the authorities to talk about Chile. On the agenda were Mexican tourism companies, Blackrock executives, a lunch with the ALLVP venture capital investment fund and bilateral meetings with Samsung, as well as Grupo México. He would also meet with data center company Yondr.
How was the reception of the businessmen?
There were more than 150 businessmen and businesswomen. The bulk were Mexican, but there were also Chileans, especially a community of start-ups present here, in addition to the Chilean entourage. The meeting was very good. They want to understand what our strategy is in economic terms.
Is there concern from companies to invest in Chile?
Not only here, but in any other place we have visited, and also when we get together in Chile with international capital companies, they tend to have a slightly more medium or long-term view and have a rather optimistic view of Chile.
Are they less alarmist?
Of course, they have a more pondered look because they have where to compare us. In general, Chile is a very favorable place when one compares it with other places, but that does not mean that they are only conversations of good breeding.
And when they ask you about the new Constitution, public security, slowdown in the economy, what is the message for foreign businessmen?
The constitutional issue so far at least has not appeared as a topic. And on the subject of security, since they are in Mexico, Mexico is not a country with better security standards than Chile. In fact, we are very, very far away. I would say that more questions have been asked about short-term issues, how the government is addressing it. So there we describe the different reforms that we are carrying out. We tell you about our plan that we have implemented to address the issue of inflation together with the Central Bank. The importance of maintaining jobs and the different measures that the Government is taking to accelerate investment. Investors, when they are thinking about an investment, think in 10 or 20 years, therefore, the cycle of the next year matters less to them.
Isn’t the low popularity of the government and the president going to make them deliver bonds to everyone or support a sixth withdrawal from the AFPs?
The public policies that we are always thinking about, not only on the economic issue, have to do with how we think we should contribute in a better way to the demands of the citizenry. We do not do this based on surveys, but on what we think. The clearest example of this is the combination between the tax reform and the pension reform. We would love to have entered the Government and raised the pension to 250,000 (Chilean) pesos, but that would not have been responsible. What is responsible as a government is that these citizen demands, which are urgent, can be resolved structurally as quickly as possible.
It has been said that foreign AFP owners could sue the State. Do you see that as a threat to the Government or a legitimate concern?
In this, Minister Marcel has been very, very clear that the government is defining certain regulatory frameworks or certain ways in which a pension system is organized, in which the private sector has a relevant role and will continue to do so. This does not restrict anything, neither the right to property nor any of the important security that companies must have in a context of market economies.
Democracies, countries, have the possibility of making changes in public policies. The important thing for the private sector, in my opinion, is that it knows in advance what the direction of these changes will be, in order to avoid surprises.
What we seek as a government is to be a government of changes, but not a government of surprises. It is possible to have changes with certainty.”
