Latin American Association of Services Exporters (ALES)
Definition
Latin American Association of Services Exporters (ALES)
The Latin American Association of Services Exporters (ALES) is a trade group that has promoted Latin America as an outsourcing base since 2008. It links 24 public and private bodies in 16 countries. Its members are state agencies, not private firms.
That last point is what makes ALES unusual. Most industry bodies sign up companies and argue for them. ALES signs up the institutions that market whole countries, so its output is trade promotion first and vendor advocacy second.
Its stated aim is to promote Latin America as a knowledge exporter region and outsourcing destination. In practice that means shared statistics, joint trade missions, and one vocabulary for nearshoring pitches aimed at buyers in North America.
Key takeaways
- Operating since 2008 as a regional federation of services trade promotion bodies.
- Groups 24 public and private institutions from 16 countries, not member companies.
- Runs SRIAM, its regional services information system, launched in 2014.
- Covers information technology outsourcing, business process outsourcing (BPO), knowledge work, and shared services.
- Speaks for the region at services trade forums rather than for any single firm.
How it works
ALES works as a federation, not a single agency. Each member country nominates a trade promotion institution, usually public or mixed, and those bodies pool statistics, fund joint delegations, and agree on how the region describes its services exports.
That pooling is the whole point. A buyer comparing Uruguay with Colombia otherwise has to reconcile two national statistics offices that count services differently. ALES exists so the numbers line up — same categories, same methods.
Six strands carry the load.
| Strand | Since | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| SRIAM information system | 2014 | Information for investment decisions, plus statistics and regulation on services trade |
| Member network | 2008 | 24 public and private institutions across 16 countries |
| Annual convention | Recurring | Buyer and vendor meetings hosted by rotating member states |
| Sector coverage | Ongoing | IT outsourcing, BPO, knowledge work, shared services |
| Regional advocacy | Ongoing | Joint positions on services trade rules and market access |
| Governance | Rotating | Rotating presidency from member agencies, plus a small secretariat |
Regional data support also comes from bodies like the Inter-American Development Bank, whose trade and investment programme tracks services flows and investment across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Global rules and numbers come from two more places. The World Trade Organization administers the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and UNCTAD’s TiSSTAT publishes the services trade statistics national agencies benchmark against.
Governance sits with a rotating presidency. Officers come from member agencies and serve short terms, so no single country dominates the pitch. A small secretariat handles the coordination and publishing between meetings.
Nothing ALES agrees is binding. It holds no enforcement power over its members, so its pull rests on the quality of the data it publishes and on how useful the joint delegations prove to the agencies paying for them.
Buyers weighing Latin American providers can size the likely savings with the OA outsourcing calculator before they start shortlisting national agencies.
Examples
ALES does its selling through member agencies, so the clearest examples are national. Each agency runs its own pitch, and the association’s job is to make those pitches add up to one regional story instead of 16 competing ones.
Uruguay is the cleanest case. Uruguay XXI promotes a software cluster whose IT services exports have topped USD 1 billion a year since the early 2020s, small in absolute terms but very large per head of population.
That per head framing is the argument Uruguay XXI leads with, and ALES repeats it, because it makes one of the region’s smallest economies read as a serious sourcing option rather than a rounding error next to Brazil.
Costa Rica anchors regional shared services growth through CINDE, its investment promotion agency. CINDE has spent two decades pulling multinational finance, human resources, and IT hubs into the San Jose area, and it now sells political stability as hard as cost.
Colombia’s ProColombia works the nearshore angle hardest. It chases bilingual contact center contracts from United States buyers who want agents sitting in the same time zone as their customers.
Argentina’s Argencon promotes software and creative services exports, positioning Buenos Aires as a design and engineering hub — a different pitch from Colombia’s volume contact center story, and deliberately so.
Brazil’s ApexBrasil and Chile’s InvestChile round out the regional offer. Both package sector briefs, tax incentives, and site visits for foreign investors, which is the playbook ALES coordinates across the whole membership.
Outside the region, India’s NASSCOM shows the same federated model at national scale. Its annual Strategic Review is the Indian sector’s reference document, and the 2026 edition put industry revenue at about USD 315 billion.
ALES publishes nothing on that scale. It coordinates 16 national data sets instead of reporting one number, which is the trade off you accept when your members are countries rather than companies.
Together these agencies feed a single pitch: same time zone delivery, bilingual talent, and services clusters that are now two decades old. It increasingly wins customer experience mandates that once defaulted to India or the Philippines.
Related terms
The terms around ALES split two ways. Some name the service lines its members sell, like outsourced processes and shared delivery centers. Others name the money and geography behind them, like cross border investment and where the work physically sits.
- Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): the handover of back office or front office processes to a third party provider.
- Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO): the contracting of development, infrastructure, or support work to external technology teams.
- Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO): the higher skill tier covering research, analytics, and specialist advisory work.
- Shared Services: the consolidation of internal functions into a captive or hybrid delivery center.
- Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): the cross border capital committed to local operations, a headline metric for every member agency.
- Offshoring: the movement of work to a lower cost country, usually judged against nearshore options.
FAQ
What countries belong to ALES?
ALES draws its 24 member institutions from 16 Latin American countries, among them Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Uruguay. Membership shifts as national agencies join, merge, or restructure.
When was ALES founded?
ALES has been operating since 2008, and the association dates itself from that year. Its stated purpose is to promote Latin America as a knowledge exporter region and outsourcing destination, with one coordinated voice instead of 16 separate national ones.
What is SRIAM?
SRIAM is the regional information system ALES launched in 2014. It carries information for investment decisions plus statistics and regulation on services trade. Buyers read it alongside the OA outsourcing glossary when shortlisting.
How does ALES compare to NASSCOM?
NASSCOM has company members and speaks for India’s software and services firms. ALES federates national promotion agencies across 16 countries and has no firms at all. NASSCOM’s Strategic Review 2026 reported industry revenue near USD 315 billion.
How can buyers engage with ALES members?
Start with the national member agency for the country you are targeting — ProColombia, Uruguay XXI, CINDE and their peers — because those agencies run the trade missions and matchmaking that put buyers in front of vetted providers.
Ready to shortlist Latin American providers? Browse the OA directory to compare verified partners.
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