Atlantic Free Corridor
The Free Trade Zones of three continents form the backbone of the “Free Atlantic Corridor” New logistics chain of exchange between America, Africa and Europe
Tenerife, November 8th, 2017.- More than 150 free zones from 34 countries in America, Africa and Europe, including the Spanish free zones with the one in Tenerife leading the way, have seconded this past weekend the constitution of the Atlantic Free Corridor, a logistics chain based on free zones that want to increase the added value of trade between these continents. Fernando Cámara, Special Delegate of the State in the Santander Free Zone, was present and participated in the event.
The free zones and sector associations present at the XXI Conference of the Free Zones of the Americas (AZFA), which closed in Tenerife last weekend, signed their adherence to the “Atlantic Free Trade Corridor” to improve competitiveness, information and trade between logistic centers and free zones as links in global value chains within international trade.
“The Atlantic Free Corridor” is a connectivity project led by the Tenerife Free Zone that was born accompanied by a report that attests the existing business expectations between the three continents, called “Study of opportunities between both ridges of the Atlantic Ocean” .
The report establishes a working basis for the synergies establishment, the investment structuring, the employment generation, the improvement of competitiveness and the technology transfer between free zones, industrial parks, ports and logistic centers of this logistic axis between continents, taking advantage of the fiscally privileged situation of the Canary Islands special zone, where the corporate tax is paid at 4% instead of 25%, as it happens in the rest of the EU.
A TRICONTINENTAL ENCOUNTER
The “tricontinental” nature of the meeting in Tenerife was accompanied by a ministerial summit to strengthen the free zone regime in which government representatives from Senegal, Mauritaria, Panama, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other countries participated. At the same time, a “business roundtable” of B2B meetings was also held to promote interaction between the companies that participate in Atlantic commercial traffic.
The Free Zones Association of the Americas (AZFA), which held its annual meeting exceptionally in Tenerife last week, is the most important group of free zones of the region, representing 400 free zones from 22 countries between America and Europe, with more than 10,000 companies placed in their areas.
Due to the international appeal of the event and the interest of its technical conferences, the meeting attracted the presence of other entities from the sector -such as representatives of the World Free Zone Organization, WFZO-, interested in the evolution of international traffic.
