Brazil & Southern Cone - October 2013 (ISSN 1741-4431)

Budget proposal: On 28 September President Piñera unveiled a US$61.7bn 2014 budget proposal, which calls for a 3.9% real increase in central government spending over estimated spending in 2013 and is up 2.1% on the 2013 budget. He listed as the main priorities: “to continue strengthening Chile’s capacity for growth, job creation and higher salaries; to continue improving the quality, financing and access to education; to continue strengthening the fight against crime and drug trafficking”. The presidential press release stated that the allocation for education (which accounts for 21% of spending) would allow the number of beneficiaries of the preferential school subsidy to increase “from 700,000 children and young people in 2009 to over 1.5 million in 2014”. The budget proposal also assigned resources to “ensure that State-financed scholarships are available to every deserving young person from the 60% lowest income households in Chile. This will be achieved by tripling the number of scholarships, from 123,000 in 2009 to almost 400,000 in 2014”. On health, which represents 16% of spending, the proposal assigned funds to operate 20 new hospitals built under the current administration and pledged to finance the construction of another 16 hospitals currently under construction, in addition to “28 more due to be started in 2013 or 2014”.

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