The Chilean government's salmon industry "rescue" package, which pledges state-backed guarantees of up to $450 million in loans to struggling farmed salmon companies, is attracting a wave of criticism, the Patagonia Times reported yesterday.
Announced by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet last week, the loan guarantees are meant to help the companies solve their current cash problems and to control the spread of the infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus. Discovered in Chilean waters in mid-2007, ISA has devastated the country's farmed salmon industry, which has been forced to curb production and shed up to 4,000 jobs.
Both President Bachelet and her economy minister, Hugo Lavados, insist the measures have a "social" objective as they look to stem worker layoffs by strengthening the farmed salmon industry as a whole.
"We're going to be very attentive to what happens and ready with all types of tools - from training to employment plans, and including permanent teams that monitor the labor situation - because if there's someone who isn't to blame for all this, it's the workers," Bachelet told the Patagonia Times.
But some commercial fishing and environmental groups oppose the loan guarantees.
"Right now we see that Europe and the United States, unlike Chile, are reacting to the global economic crisis by punishing economic sectors that haven't done their job correctly: taking over banks, companies and pension funds," said the National Confederation of Chilean Artisan Fishers. "There's no way those countries would loan scarce money to companies in order to fix a problem they themselves created. This kind of government decision just seems preposterous."
