CHILE UPDATES #23
2014 Off to an Interesting Start in Chile
2014 Off to an Interesting Start in Chile
2014 has definitely gotten off to an interesting start here in Chile. We're not even a full three months into the year and the country has already joined the US visa waiver program, seen a new president take office, and attacted over $15 billion USD worth of foreign investment capital.
The price of copper has come down, which has affected the local stock market, however interest in the country from both businesses and individuals has only continued to grow. With the global economy being in the precarious state that it is, one might expect interest in an exporting nation like Chile to fall but in reality the exact opposite has been happening.
This is one of the things I find to be the most attractive about Chile as not just a place to invest, but also as a place to live.
It's the risk to reward ratio.
If the modern financial system stays intact for the next several years, having exposure to the Chilean economy is probably going to be fairly rewarding. On the other hand, if there's a large scale downturn and things start getting ugly in other parts of the world, Chile's going to be on the top of the list of places where you'd want to ride out the storm.
The government is small here and people are largely left to do as they please, especially out in the countryside. Vast fresh water reserves in the south, a fertile central valley, natural geographic barriers (a desert to the north and the Andes to the east) separating the country from it's neighbors, the list goes on and on.
If Chile wasn't so far away from the Northern Hemisphere, this would probably already be common knowledge, but even with the distance factor word is still starting to get out.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a group of investors from Cambridge, England (often times referred to as Europe's Silicon Valley) arrived in Santiago to scout out opportunities and
get a better idea of exactly what's going on in Chile these days.
In February, China's second largest bank (the CCB) announced it's going to open up a branch here in order to support some of it's operations in the country and in January, a number of infrastructure, exploration, and energy companies decided Chile was the right place to start developing projects for the next decade.
Individually, each of these might not seem so significant but when you consider them all together, it starts to give you a pretty good indication of which direction this country is heading.
Until soon,
Darren Kaiser
The price of copper has come down, which has affected the local stock market, however interest in the country from both businesses and individuals has only continued to grow. With the global economy being in the precarious state that it is, one might expect interest in an exporting nation like Chile to fall but in reality the exact opposite has been happening.
This is one of the things I find to be the most attractive about Chile as not just a place to invest, but also as a place to live.
It's the risk to reward ratio.
If the modern financial system stays intact for the next several years, having exposure to the Chilean economy is probably going to be fairly rewarding. On the other hand, if there's a large scale downturn and things start getting ugly in other parts of the world, Chile's going to be on the top of the list of places where you'd want to ride out the storm.
The government is small here and people are largely left to do as they please, especially out in the countryside. Vast fresh water reserves in the south, a fertile central valley, natural geographic barriers (a desert to the north and the Andes to the east) separating the country from it's neighbors, the list goes on and on.
If Chile wasn't so far away from the Northern Hemisphere, this would probably already be common knowledge, but even with the distance factor word is still starting to get out.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a group of investors from Cambridge, England (often times referred to as Europe's Silicon Valley) arrived in Santiago to scout out opportunities and
get a better idea of exactly what's going on in Chile these days.
In February, China's second largest bank (the CCB) announced it's going to open up a branch here in order to support some of it's operations in the country and in January, a number of infrastructure, exploration, and energy companies decided Chile was the right place to start developing projects for the next decade.
Individually, each of these might not seem so significant but when you consider them all together, it starts to give you a pretty good indication of which direction this country is heading.
Until soon,
Darren Kaiser
