• Nearly 300 people attended the event, which was hosted by Chile’s Foreign Investment Promotion Agency and featured keynote speaker William Maloney, the World Bank’s Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Yesterday, close to 300 representatives of private firms, trade associations, embassies, regional governments and public entities came together for the InvestChile Seminar 2026, “Challenges and Opportunities for Investment in the New Global Economic Landscape,” with the World Bank’s Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean, William Maloney, as the keynote speaker.

InvestChile Director Karla Flores opened the event, emphasizing the importance of foreign investment in our country, not only as a source of capital, but as a “deeply transformative economic policy that addresses the challenges of development, the need to respond to urgent social and productive concerns and our obligation to take an ambitious long term view in a global context marked by the energy transition, the technological revolution and climate change.”

Flores also noted that, in today’s world of geopolitical tensions and overt trade disputes, a country with an economy as open as ours must be strategic when it comes to attracting investment. “At InvestChile, that has obliged us to improve our business intelligence capabilities, build an extremely specialized internal and external network and be more efficient in our promotional activities and campaigns. Today, our project portfolio and our array of investors are diverse enough and above all resilient enough to face difficult times,” Flores added.

Next, William Maloney, World Bank Chief Economist for the Latin American and Caribbean region, took the stage to speak about how current global uncertainty is impacting trade, growth and, of course, investment. In his opinion, while global headwinds and uncertainty do pose challenges, Latin America is well positioned to maintain trade-led growth.

In terms of attracting foreign investment, in Maloney’s view the region is competitive at the wage level, but needs to work on certain challenges, mainly infrastructure—in which he highlighted Chile’s position—as well as its environmental capacity, its cities and its labor capacities, among others. “In Chile, all companies are affected by financial and capital constraints, and if the country wants to take advantage of new opportunities and face the challenges of the current international scenario, it must

focus both on new environmental reforms to encourage investment and on entrepreneurship and innovation. And that environment must also be populated with the relevant capabilities and supportive institutions,” he added.

The keynote was followed by two panel discussions. The first, “Women leaders and perspectives on key industries for global challenges,” featured Amparo Cornejo, Board Member of the Mining Council and Chief Sustainability Officer at Teck Resources; Pilar Concha, CEO of the Chilean Association of Investment Fund Managers (ACAFI); Ana Lía Rojas, Executive Director of the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage (ACERA); Gloria Hutt, President of the Association of Public Infrastructure Concessionaires (COPSA); and Camila Gatica, Senior Manager of Public Policy at Amazon Web Services and Director of the Chilean Association of Information Technology Companies (ACTI).

The second panel, “Scenarios and trends in International Investment,” analyzed the global financial context from the perspective of international investment institutions and consulting firms. Panel members included Oltmann Ahlers, Head of Latin America at Manova Partners; José Mestres, Partner and Investment Leader for Infrastructure in Latin America at Patria Investments; Macarena Navarrete, Country Managing Partner – Chile at EY; and Jean-Marc Arbogast, Country Manager – Chile at the World Bank Group.

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