Annual Report 2020
1 Cencosud Annual Report - 2020 Letter from the President Dear shareholders, It is an honor for me to be the interim replacement of my father, Horst Paulmann Kemna, creator and soul of Cencosud. Just like he taught us, we will keep his focus on Cencosud culture and the careful attention and care for details and the customer. Service, service, service. From a little restaurant to a transnational corporation, with more than 115,000 committed employees, following a path sometimes winding and no stranger to difficulties, but has been able to successfully face it with its passion, vision, and unique leadership. In that context, I present to you Cencosud's Integrated Annual Report and the Company's financial statements corresponding to the tax year 2020, as well as the challenges we had to face during this period. The year 2020 has been extremely complicated because from the very beginning we had to deal with the COVID- 19 pandemic, which is affecting virtually every person in the world and has resulted in significant changes in our daily lives. Some others, like remote working or e-commerce, already were on the horizon. However, the pandemic has accelerated their incorporation into society and these changes are here to stay. In this period, our focus was to look after the health and safety of our employees. I especially want to thank your efforts, dedication, and commitment. Without them we couldn't have kept the continuous operations of our business units and deliver essential goods to the communities we are in. While Chilean national economy shrank by 5.8% in 2020 -the biggest decrease since the crisis of 1982-, Chile had a better performance compared to her neighbor nations and, according to estimates, would be the first Latin American economy to recover.
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