The Chile Economy, Social Crisis and Virus Impact

[Britkid]

It's now clear that the corona virus has weakened China's economy in the first quarter and maybe the first half by a significant amount. Not sure just how big a deal this is.

This may affect Chile. Current or projected future reduced demand of copper may have reduced the copper price and consequently weakened the peso...maybe...speculation....

[mem]

Yeah it's going to affect Chile as the top copper producer and China as the top copper consumer. In fact Chile is like 1 of the top 5 trade partners for China across the board

Chile government is trying to say everything is okay now and the copper price will recover because China is over the hump of covid19 ( yeah right, they must not have seen the news in the last few days....open mouth insert foot)

Well that is wishful thinking #optimist. Unfortunatley shows how out of touch Chile is with covid19 on many levels

[tiagoabner]

XE is getting me 815 pesos per dollar, Transferwise is getting me 810. It seems that the peso has been losing value as of late. Not sure if it\s related to the coronavirus pandemic or to the prospects of a blazing March in Chile.

[admin]

XE is getting me 815 pesos per dollar, Transferwise is getting me 810. It seems that the peso has been losing value as of late. Not sure if it\s related to the coronavirus pandemic or to the prospects of a blazing March in Chile.

copper miners have been crashing across the board with virus issues.

[Jamers41]

XE is getting me 815 pesos per dollar, Transferwise is getting me 810. It seems that the peso has been losing value as of late. Not sure if it\s related to the coronavirus pandemic or to the prospects of a blazing March in Chile.

For the moment it's related to the virus........notice that the price of oil is dropping faster than the Chilean peso for example.

[41southchile]

What a surprise unemployment is up.
https://www.emol.com/noticias/Economia/ ... llido.html

Anyone want to guess what it will hit by winter ?

[no_hombre_de_aleman]

A little tangential vingette to this topic:

Last Sunday I planned to take an overnight bus to Villarica from Viña. I intended to meet with extended family in Villarica. I booked in advance using a ticket reseller, recorrido. At the time I was staying closeby the Viña bus terminal so I thought it would be better than the Valparaiso terminal. I did not take into account that Sunday was the first day of the Viña festival, or that there would be many protests in the area.

The terminal was packed and buses were arriving/leaving 10-12 minutes late. The Condor bus counter agent told me to wait for the bus in between gates 10 and 15.

The bus I booked ended up leaving on-time from a different spot, gate five or six. I missed the bus and went back to the counter to complain that they told me the wrong gate. When I asked for a refund they told me that they couldn't issue one because I had booked through recorrido. We sat on the phone together for an hour with Condor and recorrido, and eventually I was told that I needed to submit a support ticket to get a refund.

Outside there was police presence, fires, and protesters. It felt close to chaos.

I booked a second ticket for a later bus at the Pullman counter. The bus was scheduled to leave at 22:00. Unfortunately due to the protests in the area, the bus company chose to turn the bus around back to Santiago. The Pullman counter gave me a full refund.

There were no more buses that day and the area was even wilder than when I arrived around sunset. I ended up catching a microbus back to my anfitriona. As we detoured past roadblocks and burnt out cars many people in the microbus were cheering and praising the protesters.

On Monday I caught a ride south to Pucon with friends, but ended up missing my family by a day. Yesterday Recorrido issued me an 85% refund for my ticket, and now I need to figure out how to accept it without a RUT/Chilean bank account.

Stay safe out there! I mean no disrespect with my gringo point of view. The south is beautiful and placid right now, by comparison.

[41southchile]

So they economy grew 1.5 percent in January apparantly
Above projections.
https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/eco ... rado.shtml

[Britkid]

Thanks for that, that is a little surprising. But the March and April results will give a clearer idea of where we are.

[tiagoabner]

We will have two Macal auctions this week: one on Tuesday for real estate and one on Wednesday for autos. They'll be 100% online, they won't have in person bids for this one. I wonder how low prices will go.

As an anecdote, I was looking at buying a new car right after the October protests. I'm not a fan of buying new, but the price and warranty package looked right, and it might save me the trouble of dealing with used car issues in a foreign country.

Since then, the exact model that I was looking at has gotten 20% cheaper and the Chilean peso lost 20% of it's value. In the end, the car is roughly 35% cheaper, all things considered. I may bite the bullet and get it now. It may get even cheaper, but a 35% discount on a brand new car is unheard of in normal times.

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

[admin]

so the administration sends an emergency bill to congress to protect workers durring the virus crisis.

You would think that would be something the little communist in congress could get their shit together and support, after all their bullshit about helping the poor people.

nope, they blocked it.

hope the country takes notice of their real priorities.