The Chilean government said Wednesday that the main challenges in international matters are revitalizing Latin America’s importance, boosting the industrial sector, and diversifying export markets.
The acting Foreign Minister, José Miguel Ahumada, assured that for 2023 the priorities are to reactivate the industrial and manufacturing sector and push activities with more excellent added value, among other challenges in the external plane.
“In all these challenges and axes, supporting the role of our SMEs is fundamental,” said Ahumada during the presentation of the new general director of ProChile, Ignacio Fernández.
For his part, Fernández said that he hopes “that exports will be the engine of the Chilean economy”.
To this end, he assured that he would work to promote exports “along the lines of sustainability and gender perspective, so that our companies, especially exporting SMEs, have a stronger presence in the internationalization circuit”.
Fernández pointed out that Chile has an extensive network of offices in Chile and around the world.
These entities allow “to raise the national offer and join it with the international demand, taking advantage of the benefits provided by trade agreements”, explained the official.
Chile’s trade exchange reached US$201 billion in 2022, an 8 percent increase over the previous year, according to a report by the Undersecretariat of International Economic Relations (Subrei).
The Subrei indicated that Chilean exports in 2022 totaled US$97.491 billion, which represented an increase of 2.9 percent over the previous year.
Imports, in turn, totaled 104,407 million dollars, 13 percent more than in 2021.