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LatinNews Regional Monitor: Brazil & Southern Cone - 23 February 2017

Bachelet faces new economic setbacks

In recent weeks, Chile has suffered the worst forest fires in its history, resulting in 11 people dead, with 7,157 affected and 1,644 homes destroyed. Earlier this month Finance Minister Rodrigo Valdés put the preliminary cost of the fires to the state at Cl$233bn (US$333m) albeit clarifying that this figure was “not an estimation of the direct damage of the fires nor of the losses for the economy” but rather how much has been allocated to help those affected. Further compounding the problems for the Nueva Mayoría coalition government led by President Michelle Bachelet, workers at ‘La Escondida’, the world’s largest copper mine (controlled by mining multinational BHP Billiton) began a strike on 9 February, which Valdés has since warned could have a bigger impact on the slowing economy than the forest fires.

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