Chinese firms compete for projects in Chile without state help

A dozen Chinese firms are bidding for infrastructure and renewable energy projects in Chile and exhibiting growing confidence in going abroad without state help, said Jorge Heine, the Chilean ambassador to China.

Chile was the first Latin American country to sign a free-trade agreement with China, in 2005. Bilateral trade stood at US$33 billion last year, but cross-border investment amounted to just US$100 million.

"We are different from what Chinese companies are used to dealing with," Heine said on the sidelines of this week's Pacific Alliance Investment Forum in Guangzhou. "We have a market-driven economy in which the private sector plays the key role. We don't do government-to-government deals. But until recently, most Chinese companies still felt more comfortable investing under such a framework."

Pacific Alliance is a two-year-old trade pact between Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Peru - a bloc that together ranks as the world's eighth-largest economy.

Ambassadors of the four Latin American nations presented glossy project brochures to Chinese companies, mainly from Guangdong and Hong Kong, in Guangzhou on Thursday, seeking capital for their agricultural, mining, energy, infrastructure and manufacturing sectors.

Peru, where Chinese firms have invested US$54.1 billion in mining, has 416,000 hectares of land to be auctioned in the next four years for agricultural development. The Chilean government has US$28 billion worth of projects to be publicly tendered between now and 2020.