The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Mipymes (MICM) informed this Sunday that the Dominican Republic was unanimously chosen by the General Assembly of the Free Trade Zones Association of the Americas (AZFA) to host the XXIV Ibero-American Free Trade Zones Conference in 2022, reaffirming the leadership achieved by the country in this sector with the sustained growth figures obtained in the last year.
The information was announced by the Minister of the MICM, Víctor -Ito- Bisonó, together with the president of the AZFA, Gustavo Gonzalez de Vega, during the XXIII Iberoamerican Free Zones Conference, held in the city of San José, Costa Rica, where he also highlighted the great opportunity of Central America and the Caribbean to strengthen competitiveness and consolidate itself as a model of sustainable development that will turn the region into a great recipient of investments.
During his speech at the Ministerial Forum: “Connected to Grow: Redesigning the value proposition of Ibero-America”, Bisonó presented the actions implemented in the Dominican Republic, as a model of regional success in the free zone sector, and explained “that the government headed by President Luis Abinader, in alliance with the private sector, is implementing a plan to relaunch the sector”.
“We are developing a strategy to take advantage of the opportunities that nearshoring brings us, focused on industry, especially in the free zones, to continue attracting more investments, promoting the diversification of our productive structure and the generation of new sources of employment,” explained Bisonó.
He also said that, with the actions corresponding to each one of the axes contained in the National Industrialization Plan, he seeks to make the most of the country’s potential, besides strengthening competitiveness and consolidating the free zones as a model of attraction of new investments, generation of new jobs and activation of the productive chain.
In the forum, organized by the Association of Free Zones of Costa Rica, Bisonó explained that the plan to relaunch the Dominican free zones is framed in a National Industrialization Plan, which was established by presidential decree”.
In this sense, he added that it is divided into five strategic axes to strengthen and improve key aspects such as: efficient permitting, investment promotion, productive linkages, training and human capital formation, infrastructure strengthening and access to financing.
“The global outlook is challenging for all Ibero-American countries. We must seize the opportunity to attract new investments, generate more sophisticated and higher value-added processes, create more jobs and strengthen our position and participation in value chains,” added Bisonó.
Minister Bisonó was in the Central American country, together with Dominican Foreign Minister Roberto Álvarez, Deputy Minister of Free Zones and Special Regimes, Carlos Guillermo Flaquer; Daniel Liranzo, executive director of the National Council of Export Processing Zones (CNZFE); Luis José Bonilla Bojos, president of the Dominican Association of Free Trade Zones (Adozona) and a delegation of Dominican businessmen from different sectors of the industry, in order to take advantage of the growing interest of multinational companies to relocate certain manufacturing processes to the Western Hemisphere.
