At $40 billion a year of mining exports, the sector comprising 19 percent of GDP, it is indeed a major part of the Chilean economy. It is something that the Philippines can hope to replicate.
The northern part of the country is the mining region, especially Iquique region. This Chuquicamata, I saw this in facebook being circulated as an ugly face of mining because of the huge depression in land surface, the barren soil with zero vegetation, and the sight of "natural resources being taken away by big multinational mining companies." But this is Chile government-owned mining company.
e Another state-owned mining company is El Teniente. From this computer graphics, new/current mine site and future site is going deeper. It's a nice graphics.
This is a private mining project, jointly operated by BHP (Australia), RTZ (UK) and JECO (Japan). This looks shocking and "very exploitative of the planet" in the eyes of many anti-mining activists. For some entrepreneurs though, this deep hole is perfect for a future lake and resort hotel with lots of water sports facilities or even ordinary fishing -- and create lots of jobs in the process.
There are nine major private mining projects in Chile, involving investors from Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Japan and UK. Now look at the huge investments until 2017, $67 billion, wow.
