Export Development during the 1980s

The successful growth of the export sector can be seen as an outstanding outcome of the Chilean economic reforms since 1973. The debt crisis was an additional incentive for export expansion, given the binding external restriction that Latin America as a whole experienced in the 1980s. An annual growth of the volume, averaging 9.1% in the over one-third of a century elapsed up to 2008, places the export performance as an outstanding quantitative achievement of the Chilean economy;1 in that same period, WTO data show that the volume of world trade averaged a 4.8% annual growth. Notwithstanding the Chilean exporting success, the pulling capacity of its exports over the rest of the economy has been robust only in some periods, without achieving a sustained positive association across time. For instance, in the decade on which this chapter focuses (1982–9), exports of goods and services grew at an annual average rate of 7.8%,2 whereas GDP only expanded 2.9%. This poor pull effect has structural and macroeconomic causes.