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Chilean President Jose Antonio Kast has seen Congress approve most of the economic and tax reforms he promoted Photo by Adriana Thomasa/EPA
SANTIAGO, Chile, July 22 (UPI) — Chile’s Congress approved most of the economic and tax reforms promoted by President José Antonio Kast — one of the flagship initiatives of his government agenda.
The reforms include a gradual reduction in the corporate tax rate from to 23% from 27% to encourage investment and revive economic growth.
The Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday passed the National Reconstruction and Economic and Social Development bill, which also establishes tax incentives for the repatriation of capital, creates compensation mechanisms for companies when courts overturn projects that have already received Environmental Qualification Resolution approval and eliminates the tax on a first home for older adults.
Finance Minister Jorge Quiroz said the initiative seeks to “restore tax competitiveness” and provide greater certainty for investment.
“We have approved measures to restore certainty for investment in Chile, remove permitting barriers that have kept investment projects and economic activity stalled, and provide security for those who decide to invest,” he said.
The approval represents one of Kast’s main legislative victories since taking office in March, and allows him to advance one of the pillars of his economic agenda — reducing the tax burden to stimulate private investment and accelerate growth.
Jorge Berríos, academic director of the Graduate Diploma in Finance at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Chile, told UPI that the reform is intended to restore investor confidence and create conditions for the country to return to growth above 3%.
“A reduction of several percentage points in the corporate tax rate has positive effects on companies and the economy, although those results are generally seen over the long term,” he said.
Berrios said some effects could be felt sooner in the labor market because of the subsidies included in the initiative, as well as through an improved perception of Chile among domestic and foreign investors.
“The Chilean market is returning to a structure similar to that of the 1990s, with market-oriented reforms that allowed the country to achieve strong growth and stand out in Latin America,” he said.
Berríos said the Chilean economy experienced several years of uncertainty marked by increased regulation and higher taxes — factors that he believes damaged the country’s standing among investors.
The Confederation of Production and Commerce, the country’s leading business organization, welcomed approval of the bill. Its president, Susana Jiménez, said the initiative represents “an important step toward restoring the economy’s dynamism and returning to growth.”
The only provision still awaiting approval is the compensation mechanism for municipalities, which will lose part of the revenue generated by the tax on residential properties.
Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan announces semiconductor investment projects during an investment briefing meeting chaired by President Lee Jae Myung at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Monday. Pool photo by Yonhap
South Korea plans to develop a new semiconductor production base in the country’s southwestern region through 800 trillion won (US$517.9 billion) in corporate investments that will create four memory chip fabrication plants, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said Monday.
Kim unveiled the investment plan to transform the Gwangju and Jeolla regions into the nation’s second major semiconductor cluster, alongside the existing hub in the Seoul metropolitan area, during a national investment briefing chaired by President Lee Jae Myung at Cheong Wa Dae.
“Relying on a single production base in the Seoul metropolitan area is no longer sufficient to meet surging semiconductor demand,” Kim said, noting that constraints on power and water resources limit further expansion under existing plans.
The semiconductor investment is part of the government’s “three mega projects” initiative, which calls for large-scale investments by chip giants Samsung Electronics Co. and SK hynix Inc., as well as other companies, in semiconductors, physical artificial intelligence (AI) and AI data centers.
Kim said the Chungcheong region will be developed into an advanced semiconductor packaging hub through 81 trillion won in investment to meet growing packaging demand as chip production expands, while the Daegu and North Gyeongsang regions will be fostered as innovation hubs for semiconductor materials, components and equipment.
He added that the government will help companies accelerate semiconductor investment by bringing forward the construction schedule for new fabrication plants by as much as 12 years, from the mid-to-late 2040s to the mid-2030s.
To support the expansion, the government vowed to streamline permits and construction procedures while investing in critical infrastructure, including electricity and industrial water supplies.
At the meeting, attended by Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Kim outlined a government-industry plan to invest 30 trillion won over the next 15 years to support the entire semiconductor value chain, from research and development and chip design to testing and manufacturing.
The ambitious industrial blueprint is aimed at transforming the country from a global manufacturing powerhouse into a leader in the artificial intelligence era, anchoring its strategy on semiconductors, AI infrastructure and physical AI.
For the robotics sector, Kim said the government will foster an AI-powered robotics industry to strengthen South Korea’s manufacturing competitiveness in the intensifying global competition.
Kim warned that China has already begun mass-producing humanoid robots through regional manufacturing hubs, underscoring the need for South Korea to accelerate the commercialization and mass production of its own humanoid robots.
“We must accelerate the foundation for mass production,” Kim said, adding that the government plans to create early domestic demand by procuring humanoid robots for education, defense and disaster response.
The initiative aims to raise South Korea’s share of the global humanoid robot market from just 1 percent last year to 20 percent over the long term.
As the third pillar of the strategy, Minister of Science and ICT Bae Kyung-hoon outlined a plan to expand the nation’s AI data center infrastructure, emphasizing that ample data is important for South Korea to secure a leading position in the global physical AI race.
“The next three years will be the golden time to become No. 1 in the area of physical AI,” Bae said. “The government will lead the physical AI sector, by designating it as a national strategic industry.”
Under the plan, an initial investment of 550 trillion won will be spent to build 8.4 gigawatts (GW) of AI data centers by 2029. The ministry will gradually expand the infrastructure by 10 GW until 2035, Bae said.
To support the initiative, the government pledged to ensure adequate supplies of electricity and industrial water, and strengthen power infrastructure around existing semiconductor clusters.
Once the data infrastructure is in place, the science ministry plans to develop a general-purpose foundation model for physical AI in the next three years, based on a world model, or AI tools that understand the dynamics of the real world.
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Though ROI is relatively low for finance organizations, many have cracked the code for higher returns.
A recent Bain & Company survey reveals that less than half (48%) of senior financial executives have seen improvements in speed and cycle time since investing in artificial intelligence (AI) within their treasury organizations, and around a third (34%) have seen headcount efficiencies and cost reductions.
Over the past 12 months, most enterprises have discussed AI use cases in corporate treasuries for accounts receivable, treasury, and accounts payable, and have experimented extensively with AI. “They have approached it more from the concept ‘Here’s an intelligence, let’s see how we can incorporate it into our business,’” said Rami Chahine, Chief Product and Technology Officer, at treasury-automation vendor Serrala.
“This is making the office of CFO more of an AI lab than anything,” he continued. “We are not seeing real adoption of active use cases deployed within our customer base. We see a lot of our enterprise customers bringing technology or spending, in some cases, a lot of money on technology, but haven’t really turned on agentic AI to truly realize their return-on-investment in terms of speed of delivery and the speed of work.”
According to the Bain study authors, that is a common situation within finance departments. Of the survey respondents, roughly 12% of finance organizations have deployed machine learning into financial planning and analysis (FP&A) forecasting in production.
“Yet in many cases, the underlying process hasn’t changed,” wrote the authors. “Finance teams run AI-generated forecasts alongside existing bottom-up planning cycles: two processes running in parallel, neither fully trusted.”
As a result, these finance organizations do not realize the expected benefits of faster cycle times, fewer people-hours, or greater accuracy.
According to the authors, it isn’t a technology problem. “It’s what happens when AI is layered on top of existing ways of working rather than providing the impetus to change them. If this workflow debt isn’t addressed, AI and automation can multiply complexity instead of productivity,” they wrote.
Other issues that act as headwinds to AI investment include concerns about trust, data sovereignty, and the ability of firms to audit AI’s data usage.
AIs are built to learn, but CFOs are concerned that only their instance of the AI is using their proprietary data to answer only their questions, rather than teaching other AI instances to answer someone else’s questions, said Chahine.
“Everyone believes in the capability,” he said. “Everyone understands the power of agentic AI and its ability to take over some of these manual tasks in the process of financial automation and treasury. But the biggest concern that will make a true impact on adoption is whether we can trust it.”
Despite these issues, CFOs remain bullish about AI investment in their organizations.
More than half (56%) of the surveyed CFOs are increasing AI investment by more than 15% this year. That figure rises to 83% when the window is extended to two years, with 42% of respondents expecting to increase AI spending to above 30% over the same period.