Newly installed Chilean President Sebastian Pinera estimated on Friday it would cost US$30 billion to rebuild the nation after last month’s devastating earthquake.
A day after being sworn in as the South American country’s new leader, Pinera told foreign reporters he would “reassign some resources from the national budget” to help bear the costs of reconstruction.
He would also call for help from other nations and draw on “international credits” to finance rebuilding projects after the destructive magnitude 8.8 quake on Feb. 27 and the tsunami that followed.
“It’s true that Chile is a country that is poorer now” than before the quake, Pinera told reporters, but the government intends in part to tap its savings earned from copper, of which Chile is the world’s largest producer, to pay for quake losses.
Copper prices have “fortunately remained firm, which will provide additional resources for reconstruction,” Pinera said.
Authorities have identified 497 bodies of victims of the quake — one of the largest in modern times — and tsunami, but Pinera said the toll would rise “because there are many dead who have not yet been identified, and many still missing.”
Half a million homes were destroyed or heavily damaged, mainly in central and southern coastal areas.
Pinera, a billionaire businessman ranked 437 on Forbes magazine’s list released this week of the world’s richest people, said it would take an “enormous austerity effort” to fully carry out the government’s reconstruction plans.
During his campaign, Pinera deflected accusations of potential conflicts of interest between his political ambitions and his corporate empire, promising to sell the bulk of his shares in airline LAN Chile before taking office.
On Friday he announced he had “finalized” or was “a few days from finalizing” the sale of his shares in a large Santiago clinic and his shares of LAN, South America’s largest airline, of which he owned 26 percent.
Pinera said he had to date sold more than 60 percent of his airline shares, but that the rest had been delayed “for reasons beyond my control,” notably the earthquake.
He also confirmed the transfer of management of his Chilevision media chain to a foundation, but has conveyed his intention to remain a co-owner of soccer club Colo-Colo.
Pinera took office on Thursday in the midst of a series of powerful aftershocks that triggered a tsunami alert, worried world dignitaries in attendance and caused a brief panic at parliament in the coastal city of Valparaiso where the inauguration took place.
FEELING THREATENED: The first military commission under Kim Jong-un’s leadership to last longer than a day is a sign of a growing escalatory doctrine, an analyst said North Korea discussed assigning additional duties to its frontline army units at a key military meeting, state media said yesterday, suggesting that the country might deploy battlefield nuclear weapons targeting South Korea along the rivals’ tense border. The discussion comes as South Korean officials said North Korea has finished preparations for its first nuclear test in five years, as part of possible efforts to build a warhead to be mounted on short-range weapons capable of hitting targets in South Korea. During an ongoing meeting of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party on Wednesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and
TRADE TALK: Xiao Qian said that Australia had fired the ‘first shot’ in deteriorating trade relations with China, but improvements were possible if Canberra takes action China’s new ambassador to Australia chided protesters who heckled him yesterday during a speech about the future of relations between the two countries. Xiao Qian (肖千), who has only been in the role since January, had just begun his speech at the University of Technology Sydney when the first protesters interjected, calling for freedom for Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. The ambassador was repeatedly interrupted by sign-wielding protesters, some criticizing China’s treatment of the Uighur people as well as the university for inviting Xiao to speak. “People who are coming again and again to interrupt the process, that’s not expression of freedom of
A former South Korean Navy SEAL turned YouTuber who risked jail time to leave Seoul and fight for Ukraine said it would have been a “crime” not to use his skills to help. Ken Rhee, a former special warfare officer, signed up at the Ukrainian embassy in Seoul the moment Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked for global volunteers and was fighting on the front lines near Kyiv by early March. To get there, he had to break South Korean law — Seoul banned its citizens from traveling to Ukraine, and Rhee, who was injured in a fall while leading a special operations
Indonesian President and G20 Chairman Joko Widodo yesterday set off to Europe where he said he plans to visit Russia and Ukraine and meet with the countries’ leaders to urge peace talks. Widodo departed for Germany to attend the G7 summit as a guest yesterday and today, after which he plans to go to Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “The mission is to ask ... President Zelenskiy to open a dialogue forum for peace, to build peace because the war has to be stopped,” Widodo told a news conference in Jakarta. The two leaders would also discuss the
RSS