The outsized role of unfettered finance in Chile has only worsened inequality that led to recent uprisings
In September this year, less than a month before frustrated Chileans took to the streets in Santiago, on Chile Day, former finance Minister Felipe Larrain announced new legislation that, it was hoped, would make Chile into a regional financial center. The new bill would contains regulatory changes to facilitate registration of foreign securities in Chile and eliminate tax differences between locals and foreigners that affected the ability of finance to move seamlessly in the domestic economy. These measures were announced to commemorate ChileDay in London, where Conor Burns, minister in the UK government praised Chile’s macro-economic growth and fiscal management under the Sebastian Pinera government.
After years of trying to make the country into a financial regional center, the new bill concretized the government’s intentions. Larrain explained that the initiative meant to relax existing rules of financial regulations through a number of areas, including reduce paperwork for foreign investors, introduce new international practices in the local fixed income market for investors to access liquidity, simplify tax laws and contracts for short-term finance and make mutual funds more flexible. In this way the government sought to enable growth in profits of financial assets, which are primarily held by wealthy investors and high net worth Chileans. Protestors’ move into the affluent Providencia neighbourhood to up the ante a few days ago – known as Chile’s financial district – ironically represent the apogee of this relationship.
After unease spread about the social conditions in Chile after the increase on metro fares, Minister Felipe Larrain, who retained the position from Pinera’s 2010 administration, was sacked. Larrain’s firing is emblematic for several reasons. Much of the recent analysis while rightly focusing on worsening social conditions for the majority of Chileans, few commentators have pinpointed one, if not the most important culprit, of high inequality since Chile became a democracy ended in 1990. Chile’s embrace of financial globalization has been at the forefront of higher levels of inequality in Chile for over the last 2 decades during both left- and right-wing governments.
The planned growth of the financial sector, while good for investors and those with idle assets, it is not positive for the majority of Chileans. The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean shows ownership of financial assets are concentrated in the pocket books of the 1 per cent. In 2017, the net worth of households was extremely distorted. While the poorest 50% of households had an average net worth of US$ 5,000, the sum for the wealthiest 10% averaged US$ 760,000, and the richest 1% owned US$ 3 million. To make matters worse, the richest 10% made a whopping 92.2% of investments in shares and mutual funds, other forms of equity holdings and investment portfolios, and 77.4% of deposits in savings accounts and long-term fixed deposits. In comparison, the lower 50 per cent of the population held just 7.7% of total physical assets like motor vehicles and real estate. As a result, many Chileans are swimming in debt, owing a total of US$116 billion (about 44 percent of gross domestic product) – a significant portion due to mortgages and showing increases by 12 per cent since 2010.
In its 2018 economic survey, the OECD laid out the conditions that have led to the current crisis: as many 30 per cent of Chilean workers engage in informal work or on short-term contracts, with high concentrations among women, youth, low-skilled and indigenous groups, while unemployment benefits are virtually nonexistent. Self-employed workers earn 20% less than a formal waged employee with the same skills and experience. Financial sector employees also make more than twice the average worker and even mining sector workers. Over the years, this wage inequality and labour informalisation have been facilitated by deregulating labour markets whereby workers have less bargaining power of labour unions. Labour unions’ calls to increase their stake in the congress therefore offer some hope for workers to gain more of the share of national wealth. Increases in labour income, as ECLAC shows, have a positive effect on macro-economic growth. Pinera’s obstinacy to these initiatives seem to protect his economic standing rather than promote a resolution in workers’ favour. Government resistance would only encourage further polarization.
Chile’s financial sector has expanded at a rate more than any other economic sector, and realized a significant portion of total income and profits in the country. In terms of asset base as a percentage of GDP, the financial sector (including money bank deposits and of other financial institutions) it has growth from 64% in 1984 to 67% in the late 1990s, surpassing the 100% mark in 2010. In 2016, this ratio reached 117%. After Mexico, Chile has the highest capital penetration of foreign banks in Latin America which has counter intuitively reduced the amount of credit available to small local businesses to finance production in new products and sectors. In the meanwhile, foreign investment has however expanded in areas that do not employ great numbers. Large mining businesses which employ fewer numbers of Chileans also have a disproportionate access to international markets for credit. Chile’s pension system is also privatized and seen as source for financial sharks to make a killing, which fluctuates according to traders’ optimism and can lose as it did in late 2018 when investors lose confidence.
Increased privatization of the state, and narrow industrial policies promoted by agencies like the Inter-American Development Bank bolster the role of finance using a number of instruments and incentives. Compared to years prior to the dictatorship, and for a short period during Pinochet reign after the banking crisis of the 1980s, finance was largely well regulated and credit expanded to sectors that generated a large number of jobs. Now, rather than expanding employment and increasing high-value industrial exports, Chile has since the 2000s suffered becoming more and more specialized in mining. Even as private investment flows increased in copper mining during the 2000s, this has not had a broad effect on re-industrializing the Chilean economy. The opposite is true. In fact, the majority of the country’s lithium is manufactured outside of the country.
While some economists have suggested that that higher inequality was due to the end of the high-price commodity boom in Chile in 2014, the historical record shows that inequality was rampant during Pinochet’s dictatorship and only slightly decreased from the 1990s onwards. Inequality was practically baked into the tax system, as well as the housing and transport policies of successive governments, as Chileans found it hard to seek work opportunities in its capital city Santiago. This has earned Chile the infamy of the most unequal country in Latin America and the OECD as a whole according to certain analyses.
As the world awakens to the reality that the expanding finance do not lift all boats or ‘trickle down’, if there is to be a successful resolution to the current calamity that dates back to the reforms of Pinochet, democratizing finance is critical to return power to the hands of Chileans.
