Few countries in the world have been endowed by nature with mineral wealth on the scale enjoyed by Chile. As a nation, our overriding objective must be to harness this ancient bounty directly for the benefit of our people, converting it into the one form of capital whose value is truly enduring: human capital, built through sustained investment in education, health and nutrition. In short, the task is to transform inert riches into living wealth. That is the ultimate rationale—and the deepest justification—for the vast treasures concealed in our mountains, deserts and seas.

 

The most powerful instrument available to the state for promoting the development of mineral resources is the prior establishment of clear rules of the game. Rational, transparent and consistent legal norms provide the essential foundation for rapid growth in the mining sector.

 

Until 1971 Chile possessed a well-established legal framework in this domain, codified in the Mining Code of 1932. The constitutional reform of that year, however, not only led to the expropriation of the large-scale copper industry but also gravely undermined mining property rights. The 1980 Constitution retained the 1971 principle that the state holds absolute, exclusive, inalienable and imprescriptible dominion over all mines, yet it stipulated that the precise character of the mining concession would be defined by a new constitutional organic law—an entirely novel juridical instrument in Chilean law.

 

Yesterday, 1 December, the Government Junta gave its approval to this landmark statute. Working within the constitutional framework, the legislature has created a robust concession regime that we have termed the “full concession”. On 26 November the Constitutional Tribunal had already ruled unanimously that the draft Constitutional Organic Law on Mining Concessions was fully compatible with the Constitution.

 

The full concession brings to an end a decade of uncertainty over mining rights. Eliminating this source of insecurity was an imperative that the present modernising administration has addressed through innovative and equitable solutions, thereby opening wide horizons for investment, employment and progress. For the first time in Chilean legislation, the law incorporates a sophisticated economic concept of considerable practical value in asset valuation: the present value of net cash flows.

 

This reform will enable mining to become the most dynamic engine of growth in the national economy, making a decisive contribution to the monumental national effort required to lift Chile out of underdevelopment and eradicate poverty.