Chile is backsliding on its reforms

In principle, almost everyone agrees that investing more in education makes sense as it could help build human capital and see Chile advance out of “middle income status” and into the ranks of the developed world.

However, banning students from using vouchers to attend for-profit schools and prohibiting schools that receive public subsidies from receiving top-up payments from parents, also goes against the market-based system. That has startled Chile’s close-knit and conservative business class, which fears the return of statist policies once endorsed by socialist president Salvador Allende in the 1970s.

…Compounding the uncertainty is that the reform drive coincides with the end of a commodity boom that has seen the price of copper, which makes up half of Chilean exports, shrink 12 per cent this year. In the third quarter, economic growth collapsed to 0.8 per cent, from almost 5 per cent a year ago, while investment contracted 10 per cent.

Amid the abrupt slowdown, critics joke that Ms Bachelet’s unwieldy coalition, “The New Majority”, is much like Christine Lagarde’s “New Mediocre”, as the head of the International Monetary Fund recently described the world economy. Certainly, business confidence has fallen in the gloomy atmosphere, while Ms Bachelet’s popularity has plummeted to 42 per cent from 58 per cent in June.

The FT article has other points of interest.  Perhaps Chile soon will no longer be so overrated.