Artigos

1 minuto For the fourth year running, the United Arab Emirates’ DMCC has seen off all other competition to be crowned fDi’s Global Free Zone of the Year for 2018. Almost 2000 new businesses were established in the zone in 2017, and DMCC finished the year with 14,805 companies and more than 61,700 employees. Some notable investments in 2017 include Saudi Arabia-based transportation and logistics company Bahri Group, which relocated to the zone’s One JLT low-rise business tower, expanding to more than 2900 square metres. Continue lendo→

3 minutos Special Economic Zones (SEZs) derive their value from a combination of three key drivers: an encouraging regulatory environment that provides the necessary support the industry needs to take root in a new market; an operating environment that ensures both physical infrastructure (hard) and policies (soft) are in place to support businesses and their employees; and the more rudimentary element of incentives, financial and non-financial, that provide impetus for investment in a location that might other-wise be less appealing. The UAE was a Continue lendo→

11 minutos The Vietnamese government sees special economic zones (SEZs) as the most important source for future economic growth momentum and breakthrough institutional reforms. Unfortunately, as I analyzed in the first part of this series, the dawn of the Vietnamese SEZs does not appear very bright. There are few weeks left for the Vietnamese public and the National Assembly to debate the SEZ law, which is expected to be approved at the next session. It’s worth reviewing the draft law as well as looking back Continue lendo→

menos de 1 minuto The DFTZ was launched in November 2017 in partnership with Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group. It aims to connect Malaysia’s SMEs globally through Alibaba-inspired electronic world trade platforms that are being established to support greater exchange between Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. DFTZ challenges will include: Budgetary incentives to increase imports via e-commerce will intensify competitive pressures on domestic producers, although it can enhance transhipment. E-commerce platform usage will require an SME to have an export strategy, Continue lendo→

2 minutos Export processing zones (EPZs), also called free trade zones, are one of the most common instruments of industrial policy in developed and developing countries. Despite their proliferation and spread across all countries in the world, there is little evidence about the impact that EPZs have on employment and wages. More importantly, EPZs have been heavily scrutinised by civil society, often accused of employing a ‘race to the bottom’ strategy in terms of labour conditions. The objective of this systematic review, therefore, is Continue lendo→