Santiago, June 02, 2017.- This Thursday a working breakfast was held in Santiago de Chile on the funding for internationalisation of companies organised by the ICEX Spain Trade and Investments in collaboration with the Economic and Trade Mission of Spain in Santiago. This action included the participation of CESCE and the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.

The debate has been guided by the chief of the trade mission of Spain in Chili, Rafael Coloma and it is held within the trade mission of several Spanish public companies to foster common trade and investments between Spain and Chili.

During the opening, Rafael Coloma stated that “too many national companies, particularly SME still find serious hurdles to get access to the necessary funding to undertake the export activity, broaden markets and export products or make a foreign investment. This is why more efforts in information, awareness and counselling aimed at the SME are needed so that they may get the most adequate funding”.

In this sense, the chief of mission presented the services of the new ICEX Financial Counselling unit which will be working with the Spanish SME on a tailor-based basis in order to help them identify and get access to the financial instruments which better suit their projects’ needs.

On his side, the chairman of ICO, Pablo Zalba highlighted that “the support to the internationalisation of the Spanish companies is a strategic issue on which we are focusing our major efforts for the years to come, making available for the companies all the instruments we have both concerning debt and private capital in line with the structural changes the internationalisation of companies in Spain is producing”.

Zalba also referred to the figures of the credit activity at the ICO to support internationalisation which “has shifted from hardly 2% before 2012 to more than 36% in 2016. To foster this development, new products are being implemented standing out the line International Bank Channel which allows to grant loans in local currency both for investment and liquidity in Latin America”.

FUNDING OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

Finally, the COFIDES chairman, Salvador Marin highlighted that the Company contributes to the internationalisation of the Spanish companies through the funding of the Foreign Direct Investment.

In this sense, he stated that COFIDES leads its segment and is a public-private benchmark in the field of the financial support through capital and quasi-capital in the field of the foreign direct investment. In fact, “the capital and quasi-capital instruments associated to the foreign direct investment transactions already account for more than half of the company’s agreements for the last year”.

He also highlighted that “for the last three years, COFIDES has participated in internationalisation projects through foreign direct investment of Spanish companies representing a total investment nearing 9,000 million euro so that the leverage effect of our support is 1 to 12 euro in average”.

The foreign trade between Chili and Spain shows a growing trend for the last years mostly due to the implementation of the EU-Chili Association Agreement in 2003 which made the exports double and the imports triple for the last decade.

Throughout 2016 the Spanish exports to Chili reached 1,388.5 million euro, 1.4% higher than the amount recorded for 2015. On the other side, imports reached 1,396.2 million euro representing a decrease of 0.8% compared to the imports in the previous year. Thus, the trade balance was favourable to Chili in 7.7 million euro. Concerning the composition of our exports in 2016, the highlights are electric material (16.3% of the total), machines and mechanical devices (13.7%), tractors (11.1%), railway vehicles and material (9.6%) which represent half of our exports to Chili. On the other side, the imports of ores, slag and ash (mostly copper and a bit of molybdenum and zinc) accounted in 2016, 56.1% of the Chilean exports value to our country.

Conversely, the Spanish investments in Chili are very important as, apart from the great services companies, there are many SME arriving at the country in the last years. According to data form the Central Bank of Chili in 2015 (last data available), Spain was the second foreign investor in the Andean country in terms of stock reaching 26,786 million USD after the United States showing a stock in foreign direct investment of 31,346 million USD. However, in 2015, Spain invested in Chili around 1,642 million USD becoming the first investor with 8% of the investments for the period, followed by the United States reaching 1,543 million USD. The main Spanish investments in Chili mainly respond to transactions in the financial services sector (12,789 million euro and 59.8% in 2016, according to data of the Spanish Secretary of State for Trade. The direct foreign investment from Chili in Spain is very little.