Región Metropolitana de Santiago

Of the 672 activities the tax register files firms under, Metropolitana employs more people in 267 of them than Chile does, proportionally. That comparison is Balassa's revealed comparative advantage: this place's share of an activity, over the country's share of it. Above one, the activity is over-represented here.

The register files a firm at its tax address, so an activity can be over-represented here because the work happens here or because the head office does. Both are real facts about a place and they are not the same fact, and nothing in the register tells them apart: the communes where large firms keep their registered office carry activities that are physically elsewhere in Chile.

Revealed comparative advantage (Balassa, 1965) and the space of activities (Hidalgo, Klinger, Barabási and Hausmann, 2007), computed on formal employment because that is what a Chilean commune has. Built from the 500-worker activities and the communes above 1,000 formal workers; the floors are on /datos with everything else.

What export declarations name as produced in Metropolitana, month by month since January 2025, and what the customs offices seated in the region clear. They are different things: an import declares not where it is used, only where it is cleared.

Month by month

What Metropolitana exports

What leaves, through which office, to where

Through which office

Its ports and crossings

What was loaded or unloaded at the region's ports, airports and crossings, wherever it came from: a port serves regions other than its own. Shares are of what crosses the region's ports. Every port →

What its offices clear most

1. Telephone sets, including smartphones and other telephones for cellular/wireles…US$ 1,175 million16%
2. Automatic data processing machines and units thereof, magnetic or optical reade…US$ 781 million10%
3. Medicaments; (not goods of heading no. 3002, 3005 or 3006) consisting of mixed…US$ 659 million8.8%
4. Human blood; animal blood for therapeutic, prophylactic or diagnostic uses; ant…US$ 395 million5.3%
5. Petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbonsUS$ 385 million5.1%
6. Instruments and appliances used in medical, surgical, dental or veterinary scie…US$ 286 million3.8%
7. Orthopaedic appliances; including crutches, surgical belts and trusses; splints…US$ 163 million2.2%
8. Machinery parts; used solely or principally with the machinery of heading no. 8…US$ 121 million1.6%
9. Reagents; diagnostic or laboratory reagents on a backing, prepared diagnostic o…US$ 116 million1.6%
10. Taps, cocks, valves and similar appliances for pipes, boiler shells, tanks, vat…US$ 112 million1.5%
11. Pumps; for liquids, whether or not fitted with measuring device, liquid elevato…US$ 108 million1.4%
12. Transmission shafts (including cam and crank) and cranks; bearing housings and…US$ 106 million1.4%
13. Machinery; parts and accessories (other than covers, carrying cases and the lik…US$ 99.9 million1.3%
14. Instruments and apparatus; for physical or chemical analysis (e.g. polarimeters…US$ 89.3 million1.2%
15. Motor vehicles; parts and accessories, of heading no. 8701 to 8705US$ 80.3 million1.1%
16. Other headingsUS$ 2,820 million38%

An export is assigned to the region its declaration names as the origin of the goods; an import to the office that clears it, and the office to the region of its seat. The office an export leaves through is not its region of origin: much of what one region produces leaves through another's office. Customs agents do not appear because the open databases leave them out. A change is shown only where the same months of the year before added up to at least US$ 1.0 million. All of Chile's foreign trade →