Uruguay XXI, the agency for investment promotion, exports and country brand met with representatives of the municipalities of the whole country in a meeting of the Development Directorates and Offices Network (by its acronym in Spanish RODDE), which is run by the Budget and Planning Office. In this event, the agency presented its strategies for the attraction of productive investments to the country and made available their set of promotion tools and resources to help the departments in this role.
The Executive director of Uruguay XXI, Sebastián Risso, highlighted the role of the program Más Comercio, that this year finished visiting all departments of the country to get close to the departmental governments, companies, and entrepreneurs with export potential. Besides, he emphasized on the importance of working together with the municipalities to promote both the investments attraction and exports.
At the departmental level, Montevideo led the quantity of investment announcements between 2020 and 2023 and tripled the sum of the rest of the departments. Maldonado, Colonia, and Canelones followed behind the capital of the country in quantity and together they accounted for half of the announcements from the interior.
“That’s why we are here, to optimize this distribution and add value. This year, we received technical assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to improve the work of investment promotion at a subnational level We came with our Investment area and our Executive Sub-director, Eduardo Rodríguez, because it is very important for us to help attract investments. Every year, our Trade Intelligence area prepares a report containing exports and productive activities developed by the departments; and this helps in the creation of a value proposition for every department” Risso highlighted.
During the meeting, the team of Investment Promotion and Aftercare, led by its manager, Alejandro Ferrari, presented the work that the agency did to attract investments in areas like corporate services, information and communication technologies, life sciences, agribusinesses, food and energy transition.
Ferrari highlighted the closeness of Uruguay XXI to the international investors and its access to the public sector in order to improve the business environment. He also pointed out a growing trend in the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in terms of mergers and acquisitions, with Argentina as first origin, followed by the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, and Spain.
Moreover, the team of the promotion agency presented some instruments like Investment Projects’ Portfolio, which exhibits concrete opportunities in Uruguay and connects them through a web portal directly with international investors, as well as the recently announced Single Window for Investments, an website where investors can access and find all the information to carry out all their businesses in the country.
Source: Uruguay XXI
