Minister Ampuero inaugurates 2018 Chile-Germany Economic Conference

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Ampuero, was in charge of initiating the Chile-Germany 2018 Economic Conference, a meeting whose central theme is Industry 4.0 and how successful alliances between companies, innovative technologies and research and development projects have changed business and even societies in the world.

The event takes place a few days after the Foreign Minister accompanied the President of the Republic, Sebastián Piñera, on his visit to Berlin, the German capital. On the occasion, they were able to confirm the excellent level of the bilateral relationship, something that the Secretary of State also highlighted today.

"Germany is today our main trading partner in the European Union with a bilateral exchange of more than 3.7 billion dollars. And during the recent presidential visit to Germany we made progress in areas such as cooperation with a view to forming a future energy partnership between the two countries," he said in his speech to the guests.

The Secretary of State shared with the first vice-president of the Chilean-German Chamber of Commerce, Gabriele Lothholtz, and with the ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in Chile, Rolf Schulze, at the opening ceremony of the forum "Industry 4.0 - From Vision to Reality". He also highlighted the social focus of economic and commercial relations with Germany, centered, as explained by the Minister, on the welfare and dignity of people, SMEs, regions and groups that until now have been marginalized.

In his speech on the links between Chile and Germany, he took the opportunity to highlight the role of women. "We are very interested in the gender factor and the possibility and the need and obligation for women to assume and find space to assume new responsibilities within production, professional life," said the Minister.