These same criteria are critical, too, to investors in the burgeoning R&D and IT centers of Asia, especially India. These investors want the same ability to mitigate economic risk, tap a suitable supply of workers and control costs as any other investor seeking a Latin American presence from which to service Western Hemisphere clients.
   Santiago, Chile's capital city, was one of five metros that made the short list of Evalueserve, a leading provider of "knowledge-process outsourcing" services,

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES Invest@Chile, the Government´s program to promote and attract foreign investment, has worked to support the location of global companies such as:    • SHARED SERVICES: CITIGROUP, SANTANDER BANK, SYNAPSIS, GE, UNILEVER, BHP BILLITON, ZURICH    • SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CENTERS: SYNOPSYS, SOLUZIONA,  SOFTWARE AG, JP MORGAN    • REGIONAL CUSTOMER CENTERS: SHELL, AIR FRANCE, DELTA AIR LINES, TELEPERFORMANCE, EMERGIA    • RESEARCH LABS: YAHOO!    • BIOTECHNOLOGY CENTERS: EWOS, SGS, BIOSIGMA, PEREZ COMPAC

which include business research, investment research, market research, intellectual property research and data analytics. Founded in India in 2000, Evalueserve employs 1,100 in Gurgaon, India; in September 2005, it opened an operations center in Shanghai, China, where it employs 30 professionals. As of early August, Santiago was at the top of the site-location list, which included Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and San Jose, Costa Rica.
   "Sao Paulo and Mexico City we ruled out mainly because of high costs, although they have a fairly rich talent pool," says Mohit Srivastava, general manager of Evalueserve Chile. "The salary costs of the kind of professionals we need to hire is probably 30 to 40 percent higher than what we find in Santiago. Buenos Aires also has a good supply of talent, and salaries are about 30 to 40 percent lower than in Santiago. But the country risk of Argentina is fairly high. Chile, by contrast, offers a very stable socio, political and economic environment, and it is likely to remain that way in the future. And we feel we have better control of our costs here in Chile."
   Evalueserve counts Fortune 500 companies, investment banks, and several small and mid-sized companies among its clientele, and being accessible to them in a comparable time zone is key to delivering the high-quality services they expect. Similarly, the company's clients won't tolerate service interruptions due to work-force practices.
   "Chile's advantage lies in better work-force practices, such as a low absenteeism rate, better task orientation, low levels of corruption and bureaucracy and a higher orientation towards customer service," says Srivastava. "Our clients expect a certain level of professionalism, and that comes through in the attitude of the people that we hire in Chile."