The salmon production chain contributes US$6,956 million to Chile's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 2.6% of the total, and supports 337,670 jobs, 3.8% of national employment. These are the findings of a study presented this Wednesday in Santiago by SalmonChile, the industry association.
According to Emol, the report "Economic contribution of the salmon industry in Chile" was prepared by CoMov Consultores on behalf of the association. Diario Financiero reports that researchers Francisco Carrillo, Ian Wood and Miguel Del Valle carried out the study, with external advice from Federico Huneeus, a senior economist in the Central Bank's Research Division.
That origin matters. This is a study paid for by the industry itself, presented at a seminar it organized and using figures from 2022. The available sources do not include independent assessments or data on the environmental impact of farming in the southern fjords.
To give you a reference point, the method works like a subtraction. The authors compared the actual economy with a hypothetical Chile without salmon farming and deducted the jobs and resources that other sectors would absorb. They used a model with 47 sectors across 56 provinces and transactions between companies recorded by the Internal Revenue Service (SII).
That is why the report says the industry "supports" those jobs, rather than "employs" 337,670 people. Of the total, 78,808 are direct jobs: 27,505 in farming and 51,302 in processing plants. The remaining 258,862 are in suppliers, transport, commerce and services.
In practice, each direct job supports another 3.3 in the rest of the economy. Something similar happens with money: US$2,447 million comes from farming and processing, and US$4,510 million from other related activities.
The figures exceed those in two earlier studies commissioned by the association from economist Raphael Bergoeing. Those studies put the contribution at 2.1% of GDP using 2019 as the base year and 1.8% using 2021 as the base year. The new report attributes the difference mainly to the change in methodology.
The contribution is much larger in the regions. In Aysén, the salmon chain accounts for 21.4% of regional GDP and 19.3% of employment, with 10,126 jobs. In Los Lagos, it represents 12.6% of GDP and 15.2% of employment, with 47,279 jobs. In Magallanes, it reaches 11.1% and 11.8%.
That dependence has two implications. For Aysén, it means that one in every five pesos in its economy depends on a single activity. In the Austral macrozone, the industry supports roughly one in every ten jobs in health, education and public administration.
The effect also reaches areas without farming. In Biobío, 42,361 jobs are supported, almost all indirectly, through processing in Concepción province. The Metropolitan Region accounts for 202,872 indirect jobs, although the report acknowledges that some of this reflects accounting practices, because several companies pay taxes in the capital.
"To build salmon farming for the coming years, Chile needs evidence-based decisions," said Patricio Melero, president of SalmonChile. He called for updated data "so that the authorities legislate on a sound technical basis".
At the seminar, former Finance Minister Ignacio Briones identified the permitting process as the sector's main obstacle. He acknowledged progress by Boric's government with the Sectoral Permits Law, but warned that "there is still a long way to go" and called for a public-private roadmap for the industry.
