Chile alert to negative impact of financial crisis

The Chilean government said Wednesday that the country remains vulnerable to negative impacts of the ongoing global financial crisis despite a healthy macroeconomic management and a sound fiscal policy. Government spokesman Andres Chadwick told visiting members of the European Parliament that despite a forecast of healthy economic growth of about 5 percent for 2012 and rising employment figures, "at the government level we want to be very conservative and prudent at this time and take all the possible economic measures." The meeting between the members of the European and Chilean parliaments coincided with the G20 summit in the French city of Cannes this week, in which world major economies will discuss how to deal with the ongoing crisis in the U.S. and the eurozone. "We have a very delicate international economic situation which the government is particularly concerned about and it would be illusive to think that our country is completely protected from this," said Chadwick. The Chilean government has taken a series of measures to ensure that financial markets are protected with higher liquidity and flexibility. The government has made a large scale of public savings from recent years' commodity boom with record prices for copper and other mining products. Independent financial analysts estimate that Chile's public savings stand at over 20 billion U.S. dollars which will help keep the domestic economy afloat in face of a serious slowdown in exports. The booming economy and industrialization in Chile have made the South American nation boasting the highest living standards across Latin America, according to the 2011 Human Development Report released on Wednesday by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The UNDP ranked Chile as the world's 44th best country to live in out of the 187 countries included. Norway was ranked the best in the world while the Democratic Republic of the Congo was rated lowest. Chadwick said the Chilean government was pleased with the efforts made by the European economies to contain the debt crisis there. The European Union is Chile's second largest trading partner after China with an estimated bilateral trade of 19.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2010.