El Cobre Chileno Y Su Impacto Económico

• Main Authors: Hsu, Fangyu, 許芳瑜
• Other Authors: Ho, Kuoshih
• Format: Others
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/58472031027731776263

碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 西班牙語文學系 === 100 === Thanks to the unique geological environment, Chile is abundant in mineral resources. After the War of the Pacific, Peru and Bolivia lost, Peru ceded Tarapacá to Chile, where processed the largest deposit of saltpeter in the world; Bolivia also lost its unique coastal province of Antofagasta, now the most important producer of copper. Thanks to the development of mining activities, job opportunities increased, the development of the northern region also had been promoted. In the nineteenth century the saltpeter was Chile's main export product, but this industry began to decline gradually after the invention of synthetic saltpeter. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the copper had become the Chile's largest export product; the copper industry was dominated by multinational companies. However, the monopoly provoked gradually the dissatisfaction of the Chileans. From 1940 to 1955, the Chilean government issued a series of policies of copper in order to raise tax rates and strengthen the management. Although the tax revenue increased significantly, the monopoly is still existed; in 1966, the President Frei implemented the Chileanisation of copper program, for the leftists, this plan was not a real nationalization. When Allende was elected as president in 1971, nationalized the copper mines. However, the United States imposed economic sanctions against Chile due to the refusal to pay compensation. When Pinochet took over as President, he started applying the neoliberal economic policies, one of which is privatization; however, he still kept the National Copper Corporation of Chile in the Government’s hand as a result of the consideration for economic development, however, this caused a lot of controversy. The National Copper Corporation of Chile was established in 1976 and was responsible for the operation of five state-owned mining areas; with regard to the investment, the Government promulgated in 1974 the Foreign Investment Statute Decree Law 600 in order to encourage foreign investments, but failed. Thanks to the protection of Mining Code of 1983, the investment had increased substantially. In the 1990s, although the Governments tried to reduce its dependence on copper exports, the copper was still the main export product. During this period, the private copper companies kept flourishing and their outputs were even more than the National Copper Corporation of Chile’s. In terms of taxes, attracting foreign investment, export, foreign exchange reserves, etc., copper is the major industry in Chile. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the transformation of Chilean copper policies before 1973, the development of the copper industry during the reign of Pinochet and the development of the copper industry in the 1990s. Besides, the study analyzes the impact of copper in the Chilean economy.