InvestChile will be the second agency in the world to be evaluated by the OECD, which will analyze the impact of investment attraction, the creation of high-quality jobs and other economic benefits.

InvestChile, the Chilean government’s Foreign Investment Promotion Agency, announced this morning that it will undergo specialized evaluation by the OECD and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in order to analyze the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the country’s economy and InvestChile’s role in generating economic benefits, including the creation of high-quality jobs. The announcement was made in Paris by InvestChile director, Cristián Rodríguez, who noted that “in this way, the institution will become the second in the world to be studied by the organization, using the world’s most developed investment promotion and attraction standards and performance indicators.”

InvestChile and the OECD discussed the content of the study which will address matters such as the creation of value for the country’s production matrix and its export basket as well as the creation of high-quality jobs. According to Ana Novik, head of the OECD’s Investment Division, the challenge is “to evaluate the impact of FDI on the Chilean economy and its benefits for society. In this sense, it is noteworthy that InvestChile, despite being quite a young agency, has undertaken to establish a line of work that permits its evaluation, the identification of opportunities for improvement and the optimization of its impact in accordance with international standards.”

World-class agency

Rodríguez explained that “this evaluation is a further step in the continuous relationship we have with the OECD as part of its Investment Committee and the Network of Investment Agencies. Last year, the OECD’s first study of investment promotion agencies was published and, this year, another report will be published by the OECD and the IDB in which we will be actively participating. This demonstrates the importance of having systems of evaluation and monitoring that serve to increase the impact of FDI on our economies. In line with this, Chile, together with Ireland, will now be a pioneer of this analysis which will allow us not only to evaluate our performance against the highest standards, but also to draw up a baseline for our future work.” He added that “we want InvestChile to maintain the highest international standards so that the country permanently has a world-class investment attraction agency.”

According to Rodríguez, the final report of the evaluation will be ready in about a year’s time and will involve collaboration between the InvestChile, OECD and IDB teams.

In 2018, InvestChile had a portfolio of 277 projects at different stages of development, worth a total of US$14,108 million and with the potential to create 15,408 permanent jobs. This represented an increase of 82.4% on its portfolio in 2017.