Sebastián Piñera Mining Program 2018 – 2022

The Chilean elections wrapped up Sunday with the former president, Sebastian Pinera, easily winning Chile's presidential runoff vote. Piñera got 54.6 percent of the votes to 45.4 percent for center-left Sen. Alejandro Guillier, with nearly all the ballots counted.

The Chilean economy, although more diversified in recent years, is highly dependent on the mining industry. Piñera has stated that he will position the mining sector as an economic engine that will recover growth and generate employment.

MINERÍA CHILENA recently published an article that outlines the upcoming Presidents programs for the mining sector between 2018 and 2022. Below we have provided a summary in English based on MINERÍA CHILENA's interview with the former undersecretary of mining. Francisco Orrego.

As part of the "roadmap for the future", Piñera's mining team established the need to create a Presidential Advisory Commission that will prepare a National Mining Policy for the years 2018-2050, in conjunction with the academic, public, private and civil sectors.

Within this framework, there is also the proposal to establish an Office of Investment Project Management that attracts, coordinates and expedites new investments in the mining sector, which according to the analysis carried out by the President-elect is based on "A growing delay in the review and lack of certainty, which negatively affects the perception that international investors have for our country¨ stated Francisco Orrego.

The creation of the said office is based on the experience of the MPMO (Major Project Management Office) in Canada. However, "the dependence and operation of this body is something that must be defined among the different actors, considering that it would have a broad sectoral application", explains Orrego.

Another of the measures proposed in the context of positioning the mining sector is to evaluate the creation of specific instruments for attracting and protecting investments. The idea is not to make a new DL 600, but "to think about a new statute that guarantees the regulatory stability, tax, non-discrimination, access to dispute resolution mechanisms, among others, " says the former deputy secretary.

Small and Medium Mining

The Presidents proposals for small-scale mining aims to create a special statute for this sector, with a single legal body, whose purpose is to gather all the regulations related to small and medium mining, which would include safety issues, project reviews...