By Nono Barahona. March 23, 2017
SANTIAGO, Chile. If you take a walk around Santiago, especially in the districts located in the eastern part of the city, you'll see a lot of shining new buildings. This writer lives in an eastern district of Santiago and he is used to seeing new buildings spring up everywhere, changing the face of the city and well known streets. And if you drive around in your car, you have to be careful not to fall into one of those "craters" opened up in the streets by those heavy duty construction trucks.
But now it seems that the construction industry itself has fallen into one of those craters, because the latest figure indicates a massive slump in the industry.
The Chilean Construction Chamber said that construction had taken an annual dive of 5.9% as at January 2017, the worst since October 2009.
And the Chairman of the Chamber said that such drop was consistent with the country's low GDP growth and low private investment, which translates into pessimism among construction businessmen and high uncertainty about the Chilean economy, according the Chilean Construction Chamber website.
The Chamber said that a clear sign of what is going on in the industry is that applications for construction permits (a statutory requirement if you want to build something in Chile, regardless of the nature and no matter the purpose) registered an annual drop of 24.4% as at January 2017.
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