Chilean fruit leaders have joined in a chorus of calls on the country’s new president Michelle Bachelet to open up her coffers to a wider group of industries.
The president is reportedly facing her first big political test, in defending the amount of money being brought into the country from its rich copper exports.
Opposition and industry leaders, fruit growers amongst them, want Bachelet to stem a flood of mining dollars that, they say, could spell disaster for exporters, Chile's economic motor, by strengthening the local currency.
Soaring copper income has inundated Chile with foreign money, forcing the local peso currency upwards and handing the government budget surpluses to pay down debt.
The billion dollar table-grape industry says thousands of jobs are threatened and that growers will lose more than $1,000 a hectare (2.5 acres) of grapes this year as the peso nears six-year highs.
"We're seeing a total lack of sensitivity by the economic authorities... I don't believe they have any interest in taking more drastic measures to correct the problem," said Luis Schmidt, president of the federation of fruit producers, Fedefruta.
His colleague Juan Carlos Sepulveda added the government must look after the country's 13,800 fresh fruit producers, who provide 420,000 direct jobs - compared with 50,000 in mining - and whose exports were worth $2 billion last year.
"The government kept saying this was a passing thing, but copper keeps going up," Sepulveda said.
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