Belize

Belize has several single-factory EPZs, as well 2 Commercial Free Zones, established in 1994.

In 2004, Locus Economica Founder and CEO Jean-Paul Gauthier evaluated Belize’s legal framework for free zones on behalf of the World Bank’s Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), resulting in various recommendations in this regard. Partially as a result of this work, the Free Zone Act was explicitly amended so as to allow banking, foreign exchange and other financial services activities, as well as gaming and telecommunications services, in the zones. Today, Corozal Free Zone employs 3,000 people and trades goods and services worth $400 million annually. 

From February 2018 to March 2019, Locus Economica worked under a contract to Vivid Economics and the Inter-American Development Bank, to review Belize’s Free Zones legal framework and reinvent the zones for the future, through a strategy to optimize their economic returns to the country. A large part of Locus Economica’s legal reform recommendations were focused on enabling the scheme to comply with the WTO Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Code.