On the last day of the Forum, a round of business matchmaking meetings brought together 46 overseas companies with local firms.

The International Investment Forum Chile 2016 culminated with a round of over 150 one-on-one meetings between overseas and local companies. The Forum in Santiago, organized by the Foreign Investment Committee (CIEChile), was attended by top executives from 46 companies located in 21 different countries and sought to draw attention to the business opportunities Chile offers.

The last activity, which took place in the W Hotel, allowed overseas companies to meet potential local partners and to talk to representatives of different business associations and the public sector.

The Forum began with an Inaugural Conference at which speakers included President Michelle Bachelet, the Minister of Economy, Economic Development and Tourism, Luis Felipe Céspedes, CIEChile’s Executive Vice-President, Vicente Mira, and the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena. The Conference also included two panels addressed by representatives of the public and private sectors.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 12, overseas businesspeople were able to attend sector roundtables at which they obtained first-hand information about the opportunities Chile offers in fields such as energy, infrastructure, innovation and the food industry. Participants in these roundtables included former President Eduardo Frei, Public Works Minister Alberto Undurraga, Transport Minister Andrés Gómez-Lobo, Undersecretary of Energy Jimena Jara, the Executive Vice-President of the Chilean government’s Economic Development Agency (CORFO), Eduardo Bitrán, the Director of its Office for Agricultural Research and Policy (ODEPA), Claudia Carbonell, and other leading representatives of the public sector as well as of the private sector.