Chile Invited To Participate In G-20 June Summit In Mexico -FinMin
Wall Street Journal story at bottom of page
Dow Jones. January 19, 2012
If Nogales is a reliable indicator of Chile’s economic status in the world, the invitation to the G-20 Summit is deserved.
Nogales, Chile, the site of Susaan Straus’s and Ricardo Ceriani’s farm in Chile, is 75 miles from sprawling Santiago, the nation’s capital and home to six million of its 17 million inhabitants. Nogales population of 21,000 is spread around the countryside and one small town.
Nearby La Calera, is a mainly working class city of nearly 50,000 inhabitants with a robust commercial downtown filled chiefly with small businesses. Sometimes it feels like this area of Chile has hopscotched from the 19th to the 21st centuries. On a drive from Susaan and Ricardo’s farm to La Calera, you’re just as likely to see a horse-drawn cart clopping down the road as a new automobile whizzing along. Cell phones are ubiquitous.
Even while visiting their farm in a rural section in the Aconcagua River Valley, I see evidence to support Chile’s ascension to G-20 status.
The highway system is impressive. Route 5, the major N/S route through the country, is maintained robustly. Privatized, the tolls on the road continue to pay for its upkeep and keep money rolling into the companies that operate it. On every visit since my first in 2005, I’ve seen new roads being carved out of the Coastal Range leading from the Aconcagua Valley to the Pacific Coast. Beach communities are experiencing a spike in construction of second homes, condominiums, and rental apartments. The ingenuity of construction on the steep mountain terrain that spills down to the ocean is remarkable.
When Susaan and Ricardo bought their farm, the long road from Route 5 to their farm in Nogales was unpaved. The road is now paved, there is garbage service once a week, and electricity has been linked to the whole countryside.
A rural electrification program initiated in the 1990s has succeeded in providing electricity to 90% of the countryside. In 1995, there were no streetlights on the road to their farm. Night used to be ink black, the Milky Way, Southern Cross, and millions of stars were as easy to see as if you were in a planetarium. Now streetlights line the road from Route 5 to Nogales. The yellow/orange halo over the nearby city of La Calera makes it harder to see the constellations and stars near the horizon.
Propal, the exporter a few miles away in La Calera, was not even there when Susaan and Ricardo first came here 18 years ago. It launched with one warehouse. Now it’s expanded into a huge complex of tall buildings just off Route 5 fifteen minutes from their farm. Propal exports kiwis, lemons, clementines, Asian pears, grapefruit, oranges, avocados, onions to North America, Europe, and Asia.
Euro Plant, a Spanish corporation, arrived in nearby La Calera 3 or 4 years ago. The plant constructed metal greenhouses with modern heating and ventilation systems to produce disease free seedlings. “We’ll buy broccoli or cauliflower seedlings they grow there later this year as our winter crop, ” Susaan says. The tiny seedlings are just big enough to plant and are sold in trays one meter long.
Soproval is a huge turkey growing and processing plant on outskirts of nearby La Calera. It’s the second largest turkey producer in Latin America and has markets in U.S., the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Japan, China and South Africa.
“The company was here when we arrived in 1995 and was founded in the 1960’s,” Susaan says.
The Sakata Seed Company, headquartered in Yokohama, has a small presence in La Pena, five miles from Susaan and Ricardo’s farm and a huge presence in nearby Hijuelas, the self–proclaimed “Flower Capital of the World”. Sakota grows flowers and vegetables to produce seeds. The Sakata family has been in this valley for generations, drawn by the moderate climate. The company has research facilities in Europe, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Guatemala. Sakata’s broccoli and pansies, for example, that maintain an overwhelming share of the global market.
The chain stores Falabella, The Sodimac Home Center, and supermarket Tottus had not been built yet when Susaan and Ricardo first bought their farm in Nogales. Low income neighborhood was torn down to make way for the complex that houses them. Falabella partnered with Sodimac Home Center and Tottus to form a destination shopping plaza.
A car dealership has just been built across the highway from these huge three stores.
Cemento Melon, producer of cement, concrete, mortar and aggregates, is few miles outside La Calera off modern highway Route 60. Rich deposits of limestone have been extracted from the hills outside La Calera (Spanish for “quicklime mine”) for years. The company has changed ownership from British to French ownership during the years.
The modern highways have become magnets for industry and wholesale and retail businesses. Like other developing nations, Chile has wide gaps between income classes and will have to grapple with the tensions arising from the disparity. In the meantime, it is intent on developing into an economic power of G-20 stature.
Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
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Chile Invited To Participate In G-20 June Summit In Mexico -FinMin
Dow Jones. January 19, 2012
SANTIAGO (Dow Jones)--Chile has been invited to the June summit of the Group of 20 largest industrialized and developing nations to be held in Mexico, Finance Minister Felipe Larrain said Thursday.
It will be the first time Chile attends a G-20 summit, the minister said.
"This is a testament of Chile's solid economic and international standing and to the seriousness with which it faces its difficulties," Foreign Affairs Minister Alfredo Moreno said at a joint press conference with Larrain.
In addition to Chile, Colombia was also invited to the summit to be held in Mexico June 18-19.
The ministers said the participation of several Latin American nations in the summit will allow for stronger coordination with other economies.
"The G-20 is the most important international forum for relevant issues financial and economic issues and for Chile it's extremely important to join these cooperation efforts in order to counter the effects of the global crisis," Larrain told reporters.
-By Carolina Pica, Dow Jones Newswires; 56-2-715-8919; carolina.pica@dowjones.com
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