What is an E-zone? And why an E-zone in the Dutch Antilles?
The E stands for economic. In short an E-zone is a piece of land or a building that by law has been designated as an economic zone. In this economic zone the trading of all goods and services is allowed. In this zone very favourable tax legislation and tax facilities are in place. When the trade from within the economic zone is mainly directed on countries outside the country in which the economic zone is established, than the businesses profit from the favourable tax legislation and tax facilities.
A maximum of 25% of the business generated from within the E-zone may be generated within the Dutch Antilles. The earlier mentioned favourable tax legislation and tax facilities are not applicable on the profit that’s been generated with this volume of trade.
There are two kinds of E-zone enterprises possible: goods E-zones and services E-zones. Businesses that have established themselves as goods E-zones are mainly international oriented partnerships that use the Dutch Antilles for the transit of goods. The goods are sent to all sorts of countries in mainly Latin-America. The services E-zone businesses offer mainly services via the internet. It is of great interest that the trade is directed mainly on customers outside the country in which the E-zone enterprise has been established.
The Dutch Antilles, specifically the island of Curaçao, has large advantages to offer. The legislation is state of the art. For example the legislation for the digital signature is already in place. In many other countries this isn’t yet the case by far. Also the most modern E-Commerce legislation has been adopted.
Next to these advantages there are also yet other advantages of strategic nature that the Dutch Antilles have to offer. To name but a few: well developed financial services, a sound and stable currency, a sound democracy in place, there’s political stability and the crime rate is well below average. All the world’s hard currencies are accepted. Furthermore the population is skilled and the spoken languages are Dutch, Papiamentu, English and Spanish. The infrastructure of Curaçao specifically is also excellent. Just think of the harbour for ocean going ships, an extensive road network all over and a fully equipped international airport with daily flights from and to Europe and the United States.
At last but not in the least the Dutch Antilles has a well developed internet and telecommunications sector. Moreover Curaçao has a state of the art fast IT-connection via glass fibre cable Arcos-1. A fast IT-connection with both South and North-America is guaranteed by this. Arcos-1 is good for a speed of 960 gigabytes per second!