Chile’s president pushes progress
Chilean President Sebastián Piñera said Friday that he hopes to lead fast-growing Chile past the middle-income rut that has trapped many of the world’s developing nations, and instead bring it into the ranks of developed nations by the end of the decade. Piñera, who spoke to a packed John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), said that an overhaul of the nation’s education system will be a key factor in sustaining the growth needed to achieve that goal, as will continued investment in infrastructure, and maintenance of the South American nation’s many free-trade ties. Piñera, who was elected in early 2010, said that the rapid growth experienced by Chile from the late 1980s to the late ’90s has resumed in the past year or so. Piñera said the nation’s stable democracy, economic growth, and free trade with many nations have made conditions ripe for continued expansion. He was...