Chile’s copper production down 1.6% in November

Copper production in Chile, the world’s largest producer of the metal, fell 1.6% year-on-year in November, while manufacturing output rose and unemployment dropped, government figures released on Friday said.

The National Institute of Statistics (INE) reported that in November the country produced 485,716 tonnes of copper. In 2021 through November, Chile’s copper production fell 2% to 5.18 million tonnes.

On the other hand, Chiles’s manufacturing output jumped 5% in November compared with the same month last year, buoyed by the chemical sector, INE said. The institute had reported a 1.5% rise in October.

Chile’s government also released unemployment data for the September-November period, saying the rolling three-monthly jobless rate fell for the eighth month in a row to 7.5%, from 8.1% in the quarter through October.

The South American country’s unemployment rate was also down 3.3 percentage points from the same period of 2020, INE said, as the economy recovers from the covid-19 pandemic amid a strong vaccination program.

(By Fabian Cambero, Natalia Ramos and Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Jane Merriman and Louise Heavens)