The Am Cham Visit

The Chilean – American Chamber of Commerce (Am Cham), was our groups’ first destination of the day. We had Ricardo and Pilar, a legal advisor, start off the presentation by speaking about the main functions of Am Cham.

We then had Roberto take over and speak about the progression of Chile, from an underdeveloped to a developing country on the basis of social, political and economic factors. His presentation was segregated into three sections, the reality check and challenges, Chile’s development strategies, and the final results.

The Reality Check:

Roberto began by speaking about the geographical and climatic diversity of Chile, following which he put up a few facts about the country’s economy. Currently, Chile’s total level of output is equivalent to that of just one American company like P&G, which I found astounding. Chile is also only responsible for 0.4% of world imports whereas America stands at 13%.

Development Strategy:

Roberto spoke about the different strategies implemented in the country over the years. Until 1973 Chile followed the import substitution method, in which people produced their own goods rather than trading internationally. This period had high tariffs and the result was a rise in inflation. Between 1974 and 1989, the country followed the theory put forward by the Chicago Boys. They started producing what they were good at, in order to get more efficient. As a result, tariffs were lowered during this period, and resources were allocated based on market advantage. Since the 1990s Chile has implemented free trade agreements in order to increase trade with the outside world. They currently have 24 FTAs with 63 countries around the world.

Results:

As a result of the currently implemented strategies, Chile have been seeing a continuous growth in their economy, with a GDP of $268 Billion and an unemployment rate of 6.1% as of 2014.

Thoughts about the presentation:

On the whole, the presentation was very informative and straight forward, one that the students found easy to interpret. Matt Gosselin thought of Roberto to be a very intelligent and passionate man, who did a phenomenal job presenting the matter. Griffin Casey enjoyed the comparisons made between Chile and the United States in terms of their geography and economy, since it gave a real life perspective about the topic. Vidur Relan was quite pleased with the range of topics covered by Roberto and the overall flow of the presentation.