Human Capital for the Development of ChileBy Tania Sutín Bleiberg
Investment Promotion Deputy Head, Investment Promotion Division, CORFOPublished: January 26, 2010
Unquestionably, the world has changed in recent decades. Globalization, new information and communication technologies have transformed people's daily lives and, the way business is conducted. All of these processes mean new opportunities for different countries. While Chile has been growing steadily over the past decades, there is an obvious need to find niches with greater value that put the country on track towards development. So the question we ask ourselves is: What can we do to maintain the country's high performance in such a dynamic and intensely competitive global scenario?
In response, the National Innovation Council for Competitiveness prepared a national strategy to guide the country's progress during the next 10 years. The main challenge identified is to double Chile's GDP by 2020. To achieve this goal, a cluster policy was established, which its primary purpose is, to diversify production based on innovation and to promote industries with the greatest potential for economic development in the coming years.
In this context, CORFO has undertaken the challenge of organizing and leading the design and implementation of each cluster's agenda, coordinating the work of public and private stakeholders for this purpose. Current priority sectors are: Mining, Food Industry, Aquaculture, Special Interest Tourism and Global Services or Offshoring industry. The latter is an emerging industry that poses an interesting challenge for the country's growth.
One of this industry's advantages is its increased productivity based on skilled labor. From this perspective, Global Services provide the potential to project sustainable development over time. This development is no longer based on natural resources but on human capital, with beneficial employment and salary opportunities as well as specific potential for learning and developing skills.
In fact, based on the progress made by this industry, Chile has been able to offer more than 20,000 new jobs. This figure is expected to increase considerably during 2010, reaching U$1 billion in exports, an amount similar to that of the wine industry.
Every day, more and more companies choose Chile to render services to the rest of the world. As a matter of fact, more than 60 international businesses have established themselves in Chile with CORFO's support, particularly from its InvestChile unit. Notwithstanding, Chilean firms are also joining this industry. To keep growing, these firms require skilled human capital, with proper knowledge of the English language and multicultural know-how being the most needed competencies.
CORFO undertook the mission of guaranteeing that this industry can count on people and talents needed for its development, both in amount and quality. This will lead to a tangible example of what other industries can achieve. Thus, during the past two years, systematic efforts have been made to implement the human capital agenda as defined by the Public-Private Council of the Global Services Cluster, which is aimed at considerably increasing the number of available technicians and professionals who work in this industry. This has specifically meant growing from 10,000 people in 2007 to 35,000 in 2010.
Our efforts have been mainly focused on the quality of language skills of ICT technicians and experts. More than 3,000 English scholarships have been awarded to students and professionals from this industry. This year, we want to increase that amount to 5,000, by introducing new areas and the 2,000 additional scholarships are for promoting other industry segments like BPO and KPO.
Without a doubt, these efforts have resulted from a shared vision. The outcome of the programs and actions show that this is not only a vision of some public and private stakeholders; it means much more than that. It is also a shared vision of many Chilean youth, training centers and other players willing to move forward in the same direction and to position Chile as an exporter of technology and knowledge in order to advance along the path of development.