InvestChile Managing Director Andrés Rodríguez spoke at the Second National Meeting of Regional Governments.

InvestChile Managing Director Andrés Rodríguez participated in the Second National Meeting of Regional Governments, which took place in Punta Arenas on Friday, November 5. The event was led by the regional governor of Magallanes and Chilean Antarctica, Jorge Flies, and was attended in-person and remotely by different officials and members of Congress.

Rodríguez spoke at the event about the state of foreign investment both globally and in Chile. He outlined the benefits to Chile that have resulted from foreign companies setting up here and emphasized the need for sustainable, high-impact foreign investment to be injected into the local business ecosystem.

“Foreign investment is highly important to the development of all of Chile’s regions,” said Rodríguez. He also called on regional authorities to “become better prepared and build their capacity for presenting the opportunities they offer, but over and above this, to go the “last mile” which is extremely important because it can make the difference in a company’s decision to invest,” he noted. Rodríguez stressed the importance of Chile’s regions developing their ability to provide professional attention to foreign companies as well as generating a business environment that is receptive to foreign investment.

Attracting foreign investment to Chile’s regions

By law, InvestChile must ensure the coherence of the investment promotion and attraction actions taken by the regional governments. To this effect, the agency has signed agreements with Los Ríos, Araucanía, Biobío, Coquimbo, Tarapacá and Magallanes, and has two agreements pending with Maule, and Aysén. Similarly, InvestChile has helped create four FDI attraction offices in the Los Ríos, Araucanía, Biobío and Magallanes Regions.

InvestChile has recently worked with key companies in some Chilean regions, including Sinovac in Antofagasta; Grupo Ferrero (Agrichile) and Bimbo in Ñuble; Yield Labs in O’Higgins; and AgroProceso in Araucanía. “We want to ramp up these cases and hopefully reach every region,” said Rodríguez.

“It is important to understand that this is a work in progress. It is extremely dynamic and requires constant communication in order to have positive results. I’d like to reiterate InvestChile’s willingness and commitment to put all of its capacities at the service of creating more and better foreign investment in each region,” he concluded.