Nicolás Grau presented the agreement between Codelco and SQM for the Salar de Atacama, in addition to the more than 80 expressions of interest from national and foreign companies and consortiums as evidence of the good relationship between the Chilean government and private capital.

The president of Chile Gabriel Boric, in the commemoration of the 53 years of the nationalization of copper in the southern country, issued statements regarding the relationship between his Government and the private world, specifically about the reactions of the latter on the National Strategy of Lithium.

Within the speech, Boric said that such announcements were “a cause for debate and in the big business sector it didn't go down well, but it doesn't matter because they don't like us,” said the president. However, he pointed out that “we have to work together because public-private collaboration is necessary.”

This was precisely one of the topics that the Chilean Minister of Economy, Nicolás Grau, touched on in an interview with the local media Radio Duna , where he put a cold shoulder to the president's statements and emphasized the call to promote relations between both sectors.

GRAU RESPONDS FOR BORIC'S SAIDINGS WITH BIG BUSINESSES

“The President's words, if one sees the entire speech, are a call to strengthen public-private coordination. That is what it is doing, particularly in that case referring to the issue of lithium, but in general terms, that is, to mobilize all the investment,” Grau said.

For this reason, he recalled the agreement between Codelco and SQM for the Salar de Atacama; the more than 80 expressions of interest from national and foreign companies and consortia, the search for partners for the Maricunga Salar plus the work carried out by Enami, also in the area of lithium.

“That is what the President basically called: we launched this strategy, at the beginning it meant that many said that it was not going to arouse interest and what has happened is the opposite,” the Minister of Economy told Radio Duna.