Colón Free Trade Zone

A tax that for entrepreneurs in the Colon Free Zone due to the current situation is the cause of the closure of multiple companies this year 2016.

In order to alleviate these difficulties, Enrique A. Jiménez, president in 1945, had the initiative to make the free zone project a reality, using for this purpose the geographical position of the ports and the interoceanic waterway, a crucial step in navigation.

Jimenéz recommended the reconsideration of the project prepared by George E. Roberts, vice president of the First National City Bank of New York, which contemplated the creation of the Colon Free Zone and had been presented to the government in 1929.

In 1946, the Panamanian government hired the American Thomas E. Lyons, an official of the United States Department of Commerce and recognized authority in the design of free zones, to carry out a feasibility study in the area suggested by the project.

Based on its recommendations, the government gave its approval two years later, in June 1948, to creating an autonomous entity of 36 hectares where the trade of products was exempt from tariffs and had little paperwork.

In the 1990s, the Colon Free Zone regained its strength by becoming the Latin American headquarters for companies from Japan and recently industrialized countries in Asia, and a center for re-exports to the United States.

Other important buyers were Venezuela, the domestic market of Panama, Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Chile, Honduras, Brazil, Nicaragua and El Salvador.