<article><p class="lead">Chile's leftist president-elect Gabriel Boric named a cabinet that aims to assuage his grassroots supporters while reassuring investors in a fragile balance between politics and experience.</p><p>The appointment of current central bank president Mario Marcel as finance minister strengthened the Chilean peso and local stock prices. The energy sector was similarly cheered by the naming of another technocrat — Claudio Huepe — as energy minister. Huepe has a master's degree in environmental and natural resource economics from University College London and currently coordinates the Center on Energy and Sustainable Development at Diego Portales University.</p><p>In contrast, the mining ministry went to congresswoman and former Antofagasta mayor Marcela Hernando, a surgeon whose political skills are seen as key to lowering tensions in local communities and with labor unions in northern Chile's copper-mining territory.</p><p>Among the immediate challenges facing Huepe are Chile's severe drought that raises the <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/2291649?keywords=chile">risk of power outages</a> in the upcoming Southern Hemisphere's winter. He will also inherit accumulated debts from consumers whose electricity and other services were not permitted to be cut during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as frozen electricity rates.</p><p>Hernando takes over just as Chile debates the future of new <a href="https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/2293551?keywords=chile%20lithium">lithium concessions</a>. Boric has said he wants to create a national lithium company.</p><p>Other appointees mark a generational shift. The national assets ministry — which controls government land that is key for renewable energy projects — will be headed by 34-year-old Javiera Toro of the far-left Comunes party.</p><p>Other youthful appointments include close Boric associates 33-year-old Camila Vallejo of the Communist Party in the secretary general's ministry and 35-year-old Izkia Siches, a medical doctor, in the interior ministry. </p><p>Maisa Rojas, an independent, will take over the environment ministry.</p><p>The new cabinet will be sworn in after Boric assumes office from current president Sebastian Pinera on 11 March.</p><p class="bylines">By Patricia Garip</p></article>
