Vice President Raquel Peña presided over launching the new push to position the Dominican Republic as the leading industrial hub in the Caribbean and Latin America.
The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Small Business (MICM) is working closely with the Dominican Free Zones Association (Adozona) to foster increased manufacturing and employment in free trade zones nationwide. Industry & Commerce Minister Victor Bisonó said that multinational companies are increasingly operating under the tax-free manufacturing regime and have decided to expand their manufacturing processes and logistics operations.
The effort is part of economic recovery and employment generation efforts. The Dominican government is relaunching the free zone sector to make more companies see the country as the ideal destination to relocate their production, taking advantage of the installed capacity and geographically strategic location.
Federico Domínguez Aristy, president of Adozona, highlighted that despite the hard blow the pandemic has meant for all productive sectors, free trade zones will close in 2020 with a volume of exports similar to that of 2019. “This is excellent news and a strong and very positive sign of what our dynamic sector is capable of doing,” said Dominguez Aristy.
Dominguez said Adozona shares the goal of the new government to create 100,000 new jobs in the free zones, increase annual exports to double digits and generate more foreign exchange in the period 2020-2024. At present, upwards of 176,000 are employed in free zones.
The new plan is based on investment promotion, zero bureaucracy and trade facilitation, promotion of productive linkages, education, strengthening of infrastructure and open data.
To promote foreign investment in the country, he explained that the goal is to make direct contact with world-renowned companies with great manufacturing capacity, so that it generates a multiplier effect and attracts other companies in the same industry.
Free Trade Zones are one of the largest formal employment sources, providing 39% of industrial jobs. Free zone exports were 57% of total export of goods in 2019, according to Adozona data.
Betting on the use of open data and improving decision making and policymaking in the sector, Industry & Commerce Minister Bisonó showed the digital platform that will be used from now on. This system integrates the statistics of Customs, the National Statistics Office (ONE) and the National Council of Free Export Zones (CNZFE) allowing the visualization of the main performance indicators in a single “dashboard”.
Attending the new plan’s presentation was Mohammed Al Zarooni, president of the World Free Zones Organization and Gustavo Gonzalez de Vega, president of the Free Zones Association of the Americas. Also attending were Daniel Liranzo, executive director of the CNZFE; Labor Minister Luis Miguel Decamps; Pedro Brache, president of the National Business Council (Conep); and José Manuel Torres, executive vice president of Adozona; the director of Infotep, Rafael Santos; the Director of ProIndustria, Ulises Rodriguez; and the director of ProDominicana, Biviana Riveiro.
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Ministry of Industry & Commerce
27 October 2020