SANTIAGO – Chile, the world’s biggest copper producer, saw extraction and processing of the soft metal decline nearly 10% in December 2020 from the same month a year ago, official figures showed yesterday.
The decline fuelled a 9.3% drop year-on-year in overall metal mining production for the final month of 2020, which nevertheless saw a 0.5% increase in mining production compared with 2019, according to the INE statistics institute.
Chile produces nearly a third of the world’s copper, at about 5.7 million tonnes a year.
The country’s gigantic copper industry has not halted operations despite the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected some 700,000 people and killed 18,000 in Chile.
INE also announced that unemployment was 10.3% in the final quarter of last year, slightly lower than the previous quarter, but 3.2 percentage points higher than a year ago, partly due to movement restrictions aimed at halting Covid-19. – AFP, January 30, 2021
