The quake in Chilean economy

Don’t you find it weird that the Haitian earthquake got so much more press than the Chilean earthquake? Haven’t you realized how the Haitian earthquake was everywhere in the news and Chile seems to be unimportant? Well, that is mainly because of the vast differences between these two countries’ economies. The earthquake in Chile was stronger than the one in Haiti, yet the damages and the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake seem to be worse. Chile has a pretty good economy; it is in fact the 46^th richest country in the world. The South American country was much more prepared in its infrastructure to a catastrophe of this magnitude, whereas the Caribbean country is one of the poorest countries in the world and is not prepared to receive a natural disaster of this level.

Chile has a very stable economy and is prepared to affront the damages caused by the earthquake. Not without effort though! The catastrophe caused $30 billion in destruction and damages. Most likely if they invest their money properly they can rebound to how they were before. They are also recovering from recession since last year and their economy is expected to expand 5%. The Chileans can have a very great reserve of copper which they base their economy on, and if managed well they would be right back at where they were before the earthquake and before recession or even go higher on the world wide scale.

Haiti does not have such a good economy and that is why the world has aided them so much. Chile does not necessarily need the support that is being offered to them (which is much less than the support offered to Haiti), but help is always welcome. Even if the country is prepared to receive such a hit to their economy that doesn’t mean that the earthquake does not pose a setback for Chile; the Chilean economy would have grown more if it hadn’t been affected by this terrible and very sad natural disaster. And as we now know, the losses are not only social, but also economic.