Rich Chileans wait 13 months for new cars
Shock, frustration outbursts, especially from those looking to buy a Silverado
In downtown Santiago, the epicenter of what is likely the world’s hottest economy, Carol Castillo is meeting lots and lots of angry people.
Castillo is a saleswoman at a Chevrolet dealership in the city, where demand for cars is so red hot from cash-flush Chileans that wait lists stretch on for months. Customers don’t take this too well, Castillo says. Shock leads to frustration and at times to outbursts, especially from those looking to buy a Silverado. The current estimated delivery date for a diesel version of the popular pickup: October of 2022.
“Everybody wants their car right now,” Castillo said. It was a Wednesday morning, typically a quiet time for the dealership. And yet as Castillo looked across the showroom, every single table was filled with would-be buyers.
The shortages aren’t uniquely Chilean, of course - global supply-chain problems are spurring wait times for cars in many countries — but they’re particularly acute here. Locals are on a buying spree of epic proportions. Cars, refrigerators and electronics are all flying off the shelves.
High growth
Growth, according to the central bank, will zoom to as high as 11.5 per cent this year, which would not only make it the fastest among major economies but also a record in Chile. That’s no small feat in a country that sustained
one of the greatest economic expansions of modern times in the 1980s and 1990s, after dictator Augusto Pinochet’s “Chicago Boys” unleashed a wave of free-market reforms.
Ironically, one of the strongest drivers of growth now comes from partially dismantling a key economic pillar from that era by allowing early withdrawals from the private pension funds established under Pinochet. That’s injected $49 billion (Dh180b) into the economy. Also helping are the government’s pandemic-era cash handouts, another product of the country’s move away from the strictest versions of Chicago Boys capitalism.
Soaring economy
All that leaves central bank officials to predict the fastest economic growth in records going back to 1961, according to prognostications that were revised earlier this month. That forecast is at the top end of estimates for 102 major economies tracked by Bloomberg, which show China expanding by 8.4 per cent and Brazil just 5.2 per cent.
Indeed, signs of a roaring economy are everywhere in Chile. Car sales soared 97 per cent in August from a year ago, nearing the highest for any month on record. Credit and debit card transactions hit a record in August, indicating robust consumer spending. Sales of durable goods surged 130 per cent in the second quarter from a year earlier.
Andres Balbontin, assistant commercial manager at Salfa, a national chain of dealerships that includes the Chevrolet location in downtown Santiago, said: “There’s tons of money in the streets.”