According to CNN Chile, former Finance Minister Nicolás Grau said the 2027 Ley de Presupuesto (Chile's annual budget law) bill cuts employment-related plans and subsidies by 30% compared with 2026. He made the remarks on T13, days after the Government submitted the proposal to the Congreso Nacional (Chile's national legislature) this week.
Grau described the bill as "anti-women, anti-university, anti-science". In his view, it also "does not recognize the problems of climate change".
His criticism starts with public investment, meaning State spending on projects such as roads, hospitals or buildings. According to the former minister, the Government saved money in the 2026 Budget by cutting that investment, which affected infrastructure and job creation.
"When countries are in as bad an employment situation as our country is in now, the tool they usually have closest at hand is to speed that up through public investment," he said. Instead, he added, the Government applied "a big brake".
Grau acknowledged that the "Chile Despega" plan, included in the 2027 Budget, "is better than what they had done before". But he questioned the promise to execute 100% of investment this year. As he explained, that 100% is calculated on a budget that has already been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars.
Think of it like a savings goal: if your salary is cut and you then spend everything you have left, you hit 100%, but of a smaller amount. According to Grau, that is what is happening with investment: "even if they deliver on what they have said these past few days, they will invest considerably less than what was in the budget".
For next year, the former minister estimated that the total amount allocated to investment grows by "a little more than 1%". Based on that figure and the drop in employment subsidies, he rejected the idea that the bill is pro-employment or pro-investment, as would be expected of a budget meant to reactivate the economy.
On science and higher education, Grau accused the bill of cutting funding for science, libraries and universities. He also criticized the end of the Desarrollo Productivo Sostenible (Sustainable Productive Development) program, created under the previous administration, which funded companies and universities to develop technologies that would allow growth with lower environmental impact.
As the "icing on the cake", in his words, the bill no longer requires an assessment of whether spending helps reduce the gap between women and men. That assessment is a recommendation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the club of developed economies to which Chile belongs.
The CNN Chile report does not include a Government response to these criticisms or details on the legislative timetable. The bill is already in Congress, where lawmakers and committees have begun reviewing the budget items ahead of a vote.
