The city of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia was the first stop on a visit to the Middle East by the Director of InvestChile, Andrés Rodríguez Rowe, together with the Undersecretary of International Economic Relations, Rodrigo Yáñez. In efforts to attract foreign investment to Chile, they met with Saudi officials and sovereign wealth funds. The goal is to showcase opportunities in Chile in sectors such as energy, infrastructure and green hydrogen.

The first scheduled event was a meeting with the Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, also attended by the acting Head of the Investment Promotion Division of InvestChile, Salvatore Di Giovanni. Issues addressed during the meeting included economic cooperation and boosting investment in Chile.

The delegation then met with the Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Abdullah Amer Alswaha. The meeting focused on Chile’s role as a digital hub for Latin America and its possible incorporation into the Digital Cooperation Organization (DCO), the most important digital market in the region. Rodríguez pointed out that in recent months, the foremost technology companies have begun new operations in Chile (including Microsoft, Google, Oracle and Huawei) and that InvestChile is currently managing a US$4 billion portfolio that involves projects in various stages of development.

The Director of InvestChile also held a meeting with Omar Abdullah Alshamlan from the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources to explore investment opportunities and potential collaboration in mining services.

Another notable aspect of the visit was a presentation on investment opportunities by InvestChile to the sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund, which manages over US$ 2.3 billion in assets. It focused on investment potential in both public concessions (with a value of US$ 14.5 billion) and energy and revealed how attractive Chile is for producing green hydrogen. Rodríguez stressed that Chile is projected to produce the lowest cost green hydrogen on the planet by 2030, thanks to developments in generating clean energy, a key component in production.

In addition, the Chilean officials explored areas of collaboration with the Saudi investment promotion agency, Invest Saudi, for the purpose of sharing best practices and facilitating the exchange of pertinent information.

As the visit came to a close, the delegation discussed investment opportunities in the food and agriculture sector with the Vice Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture, Mansour bin Hilal Al Mushaiti; and investment possibilities with the CFO of SALIC (Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company), Mohammed Al-Mousa. “This is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate Chile’s potential to an economy as important as

Saudi Arabia. There is plenty of room for Middle East investment to continue to grow in Chile and we at InvestChile will continue to work to make that happen,” said Rodríguez.

The trade visit to the Gulf nations will continue with stops in Qatar.