• InvestChile director Karla Flores explained that the agency will focus on promoting FDI as a tool for development, playing an effective role in resolving the needs of Chileans and transforming Chile into a hub of investment opportunities.

InvestChile, Chile’s Foreign Investment Promotion Agency, has released its Public Accountability report for 2021, the first under the leadership of its new director, Karla Flores. In her presentation, Ms. Flores reported that 2021 was marked by the challenge of resuming economic activity in a post-pandemic scenario and that the year closed with positive results for the agency. She also explained the areas of focus for the agency’s work in 2022.

Flores forecast a challenging global economic scenario in 2022 and explained that InvestChile is therefore developing a new strategy for its work with three main areas of focus. The first is to position foreign investment as an economic policy tool at the service of Chile’s strategy for development. The second is to ensure that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and its benefits will play an effective role in resolving the urgent needs of the Chilean people. The third is to transform Chile into a hub of opportunities for the investments of the future.

“The first will be achieved through coordination with state ministries, services and regional government, with a long-term view for the country that allows us to incorporate the private world and direct our work and coordinated efforts towards sectors in which investment can make a difference. The second is about opening and strengthening channels throughout Chile in order to better take advantage of the benefits of investment. On the third point, we want to take advantage of the special characteristics that make Chile an outstanding natural laboratory that can be used as a technological, inclusive and green test market,” Flores explained.

2021 Results

In 2021, InvestChile carried out 115 activities in 23 different countries with the aim of promoting foreign investment. This allowed the InvestChile portfolio to grow 25.1%, after managing and supporting 486 projects at different stages of development worth more than US$27 billion. These projects are associated with the creation of more than 20,000 permanent jobs, 37% more than in 2020.

“As in 2020, more than 85% of these activities were carried out remotely and this entailed strengthening our work to identify companies with investment potential, as well as coordinating work with the State’s external network,” Flores stated. The agency also worked to diversify investor countries and closed the year managing projects from 49 different countries.

Important progress was made in the results obtained through digital marketing, an area where InvestChile has been a pioneer among foreign investment promotion agencies around the world. The agency developed 187 digital campaigns that allowed 30 new projects to enter Chile worth more than US$1.5 billion. These numbers translate to one in four projects being developed as a result of digital marketing, compared to one in 22 initiatives coming from the same channel four years ago.

“Even though our 2021 results were positive, the agency’s challenges are extremely important this year, given we are facing a post-pandemic scenario in which recovering jobs is a priority and everything is taking place in a complex global context,” Flores stated.

“We will keep working to attract to Chile more and better foreign investment that will contribute to our economy, generate new opportunities, improve our people’s quality of life, and allow us to take a leap forward towards a sustainable and inclusive future,” she concluded.