Knowledge-Intensive mining services: a regional approach for their development in Chile

Governments in every country are concerned about the local economic development within each country’s region. In this vein, the case of mining industry draws attention in its trend of establishing enclave economies rather than cluster dynamics at the local level. In the case of the mining industry one might estate that there is no room for local economic development based on a strong industrial fabric if no directed policies are set and implemented. This paper’s objective is to understand how the backward and forward linkages approach is a key argument to inform regional industrial and vertical initiatives that aim to upgrade mining suppliers’ technological capacities. Based on the strategic design revision of the public-private programs for mining suppliers’ development and five case studies, we explore whether those implemented initiatives are being locally translated into mining regions. We find that the regional approach is nearly nonexistent in public policies implemented in the last 12 years. From our perspective, this lack of the regional approach makes it difficult to visualize direct effects from public-private policies on local firms’ performance. All these issues contribute inputs for scoping the design and deployment of policy tools for local economic development.