The V International Foreign Investment Forum, which will take place in January 2019, was announced in a ceremony chaired by the Minister of Economy, Economic Development and Tourism, José Ramón Valente.
The V International Investment Forum Chile 2019 was announced at a ceremony held in the Economy Ministry and will be seeking to attract 100 overseas companies. The Forum, which will take place in Santiago between January 15 and 17, 2019, is organized by InvestChile as a means of bringing overseas companies with investment potential to Chile and putting them in contact with business opportunities, local companies and the authorities. During three days, senior executives from mining, technology, infrastructure, food and venture capital companies will have access to the country’s principal decision-makers and be able to learn first-hand about what Chile offers.
The ceremony, which was chaired by Economy Minister José Ramón Valente, was attended by over 25 representatives of embassies and bi-national chambers of commerce. Minister Valente assured that “as a government, we are working to make Chile a more favorable place for foreign investment. Our aim is to make it a less bureaucratic country and, to that end, we are seeking to improve processes, whether from the regulatory or legal standpoint, and are also creating a new institution, the Office for Management of Sustainable Projects (GPS) so that it helps investors to navigate the bureaucracy of the Chilean state more easily.”
Ian Frederick, acting director of InvestChile, pointed out that “the idea is to provide a general and specific overview of the business opportunities available in Chile and, for this, we are working in coordination with ministries and the private sector. For example, we have the portfolio of concessions of the Ministry of Public Works as well as that of ENAMI in mining. The first task is to find suitable companies and, with that in mind, we are today launching an effort that will have the support of bi-national chambers of commerce and embassies as well as our offices in San Francisco, Frankfurt and Tokyo.” According to Frederick, the agency expects to reach the planned number of companies with both companies that already have operations in Chile, supporting them to expand their projects in the country, and new companies, especially those that can use Chile as a platform for the rest of the region.
In the first five months of this year, Chile received a net inflow of US$8,799 million in the form of foreign direct investment, up by 400% on the same period last year and by 27% on the inflow during the whole of last year (US$6,419 million).
Since its first version, this Forum, organized by InvestChile, the government’s foreign investment promotion agency, has been attended by over 250 companies from 18 countries, resulting in over 800 meetings and 114 investment projects equivalent to US$21,839 million.
For further information, please visit www.chileinvestmentforum.cl.