Quiroz opens door to private capital in Codelco itself

Chile's finance minister, Jorge Quiroz, said on Wednesday that in the longer term the country may have to consider private-capital investment in Codelco itself, beyond the project partnerships already used by the state copper miner.

Quiroz made the comments in an interview with Bloomberg from his office in Santiago, according to Bloomberg Línea, the wire's Spanish-language site. The English-language Bloomberg article later posted on the wire's X account is behind a paywall and was not read for this report.

"In the longer term, we may have to think about private-capital investment in Codelco itself," Quiroz said, according to Bloomberg Línea. The site reported that he said any such measure would maintain state control and is not part of the government's immediate plans. "First of all, we have to put the house in order," he said, a comment Bloomberg Línea said included changes in the company's management. Bloomberg Línea also reported that he said Codelco may need to sell some non-strategic assets to concentrate on its core business.

Codelco's output remains under pressure. The Chilean Copper Commission's (Cochilco) monthly-by-company table put its production at 91,600 tonnes in September, down 15.5%, and at 853,000 tonnes in the first nine months, down 9%, in a national decline reported this week. Chairman Bernardo Fontaine has put this year's output closer to 1.2 million tonnes and said the company will try to approach 1.3 million tonnes a year over the next four years. In a La Tercera interview published on Sunday, he said Codelco is not considering large investment projects in these years, except at Diamante at El Teniente, and called for a rewrite of Law 19.137, the 1992 partnership law, so it can bring in private miners.

The Socialist Party and the Federación de Trabajadores del Cobre (FTC), the copper workers' union, had already issued public statements on Tuesday, before the Bloomberg interview. The Socialist Party said, "We reject that the difficulties be used as a pretext to privatize Codelco or to dispose hastily of strategic assets," and demanded that the government "maintain the investment plan and not sell its stakes in copper-mineral assets," according to The Clinic. The party said the discussion coincided with consideration of Codelco's 2027 investment budget.

The FTC, in a statement posted on its website, said: "We denounce a deliberate and strategic campaign that seeks to clear the way toward the dismantling and covert privatization of our greatest public wealth."

Fontaine, speaking to Radio Infinita on Tuesday, said the recovery plan does not include selling shares and that Codelco wants public-private partnerships to develop new mines, T13 and Emol reported. "In this recovery plan there is no possibility of selling shares," he said, according to T13.

In follow-up remarks reported by BioBioChile after the Bloomberg interview, Quiroz said that what he has pointed to "many times" is "increasing private capital, which is not the same as privatization." It "has to be something that is discussed broadly, with a broad political spectrum, because it is a country decision, and it is not in the short term of any plan, but it is always good to look at it considering all the development possibilities the company has, and that it sometimes does not have all the resources, and that the state needs Codelco's resources," he said. The state could continue to use the resources that come from the country's largest public company, he said, "but that the development projects be with private participation."