Chile: offshoring opportunities in Latin America

Chile is attracting considerable attention from foreign companies as an offshoring location

Chile for 4th consecutive year has been included into the Top 10 Offshore locations, according to the consulting firm A.T. Kearney. The A.T. Kearney´s Global Service Location Index annually analyzes and ranks the top 50 global locations suitable for remote operations such as IT services, contact centers and backoffice functions. Chile stands out within the ranking for its business and living environment, attractive risk profile, low infrastructure costs, and openness to trade.

Santiago City
Santiago is a modern capital city, home to nearly 30 percent of the population, and the administrative, economic, political and cultural center of the country. In the last years, Santiago infrastructure has boomed, expanding the metropolitan underground network, building new urban highways, constructing modern residential and office buildings and commercial complexes, and modernizing the airport.

Healthy and Stable economy
Several reports and rankings by independent international institutions confirm Chile’s position as one of the most competitive countries in the world because of its dynamic and low-risk business environment. OECD member countries recently invited Chile to open discussions regarding becoming a member of that organization, further validating Chile’s economic stability. Chile - the world's largest copper producer – is currently experiencing great prosperity,  thanks to high global copper prices.

An open country
Chile is one of the most open countries in the world. With a wide network of economic and trade agreements, Chile easily has preferential access to the 90% of the world’s GDP. Chilean agreements cover countries such as the USA, China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, countries within Central and South America and the European Union. Currently, Chile is negotiating further bilateral deals with Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Turkey.

Government commitment
In December 2007, the Chilean Government defined 8 productive clusters to be developed in Chile, including both the mining and aquaculture clusters, among others. The first cluster to undergo intensive development is the Offshoring Cluster, which focuses on operations and professional services that can be exported from Chile to the world. A select group of private companies, universities, associations and government agencies are collaborating in this initiative.

Since 2000, InvestChile - a Investment Promotion Program– has worked actively to attract offshoring operations to Chile, targeting projects ranging from call centers and  software development centers to engineering services and KPO projects.  

Success stories
In recent years, due to the strong growth and stability of the Chilean economy, many multinational companies have chosen Santiago as the place for their regional headquarters and offshoring centers.  Some recent examples include Oracle, Yahoo! Research, CNN and Procter & Gamble, among others.