Boric promises businesspeople that his government in Chile will be “ecologist”

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The president-elect of Chile, the leftist Gabriel Boric, delivered a speech this Thursday before the most important business forum and affirmed the government he will start next March 11 will be one of an “ecologist” character.

“Our government plan proposes to initiate a path of profound changes that seek to strengthen the social protection network, get our economy out of the productive stagnation and face the climate crisis,” said Boric at the closing of the National Business Meeting (Enade) in Santiago, which brings together the country’s most prominent businesspeople.

“For economic recovery and job creation to be sustainable over time, we have to take on the unavoidable challenge of the climate crisis. We have said it, and today I reiterate it, we are going to be an ecologist government”, added the leftist leader.

Boric indicated that one of the premises for Chile‘s economic recovery is that “it should be respectful with the environment”.

“It is not a question of activism and of generating an unbridgeable dichotomy between development and sustainability. We have to find a balance,” he added.

The other two axes of his program “of growth and economic recovery” are: “to resume a path of sustainable growth that facilitates the expansion of social rights” and the recovery of formal jobs that have been left behind in the pandemic, mainly for young people and women.

The president-elect also said he hopes the country can “play an international role” to “convince” developed countries to make “a greater effort” in the fight against climate change.

He also spoke of his government’s willingness to allocate the “public and private” resources necessary to promote economic recovery but committed to “environmental sustainability and fiscal sustainability”.

“Just as we cannot depredate today the nature that we will inherit to those who today are children, neither can we get into debt irresponsibly at the expense of the spending capacity of future generations,” he said.

For 2021, the government estimates a GDP expansion of around 11.5% compared to the 5.8% drop recorded in 2020. In 2022, during the first year of Boric’s mandate, the Chilean economy would suffer a slowdown and would grow around 2%.

With information from AFP