DAY ONE PRO-CHILE

DAY O NE January 28, 2013

PROCHILE

Mr. Alfredo Worner, Sectorialista e-Commerce & Retail Departamento Commercio de Servicios, had an hour and a half long round table discussion with our students. ProChile is funded by the Chilean Glovernment and is tasked with attracting foreign direct investments and new businesses to he country. 

Mr. Worner explained that Chile had to become an exporting country because the purchasing power of neighboring countries in Latin America was very low. As of now, Chile does not have a trade deficit due to the high price of copper. Mining is still one of the most important industries that supports the  economic health of the country. 

Students were also interested in how the health care and pension systems are operating in Chile.

DAY THREE

Yesterday evening there was an earth quake in Chile. We are fine and continuing with our business residency. We are leaving on Friday evening. 

DAY THREE

Wednesday, January 30th

In the morning the students visited AVIRSUR. This company provides services and sells Hawker-Beech airplanes. 

The facility is the best in Chile, and the management was happy to receive delegations from the air capital of the world. Chilean economy is owned and run by five richest families. One of the members of the family participated in the meeting and answered our questions. 

A few students work at Beechcraft, and they invited Mr. Matetic to visit their company  in Wichita.

We went to the famous fish market for lunch. Tons of fresh catch of different sizes and types, and fish smell. Many small and big fish restaurants around as well as souvenir booths. 

The afternoon meeting was with DGAC -Direction General de Aeronautica. It is a state agency for civil aeronautics operating since  1930. The DGAC is a key pillar of the Chile's National Aeronautics System with control center, innovative technology and new management concepts. It was the first presentation delivered in Spanish and translated for us.

DAY ONE

Our first meeting for the week was with Señor Martin Perez, the Managing Director of Corporate and Investment Banking of Santander Bank, the largest bank in Chile and one of the top five in the world.  Mr. Perez talked about banking in Chile and the Chilean banking system. Impressively, when many other banks were in financial trouble and facing colapse in 2009, Banco Santander in Chile remained strong.  Why? For a combination of reasons.  First, they are a fiscally conservative and never made sub prime loans so the collapse of the housing market did not put such downward pressure on the value of their mortgage loans.  Second, Chilian business owners tend to be risk adverse and don't carry such large credit balances so that during the economic downturn the level of defaults were not dangerously hugh for the bank. Third, the bank has a very large cash reserve in the form of pension funds that allowed them to weather the economic storm, and finally, Chile has a strict set of banking regulations that help banks maintain their strong position. According to Señor Perez, a strong banking system is vital to the economic growth of a country, and he appeared to be very proud of the success of Banco Santander and its role in the growth of the Chilean economy.