SANTIAGO-Chile, April 16 (UPI) -- Chilean President José Antonio Kast announced a package of more than 40 measures aimed at breaking the country's economic stagnation and restoring stronger growth.
In a nationally televised address Wednesday night, Kast outlined reforms centered on five main goals: improving Chile's tax competitiveness, strengthening formal employment, simplifying regulations, increasing legal and regulatory certainty, and restraining public spending.
"We are going to break with a state that spends more than it has. We are going to break the bureaucracy that paralyzes and suffocates investment. We are going to break everything that is bad to rebuild everything that is good," Kast said.
He added Chile must return to robust growth and job creation, arguing that while the average corporate tax rate among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development fell to 22% from 31% since 2000, Chile's rose to 27% from 15% during the same period, while national growth has remained below 2%.
By 2030, the government aims to reduce unemployment to 6.5%, lift annual economic growth to about 4% and restore structural fiscal balance, Kast said. The unemployment rate was 8.3% as of February, and the economy grow by 2.5% last year.
