Requirements

These are the requirements your business must fulfill to in order to receive the benefits and exemptions of a Free Trade Zone.

Investment:

Minimum investment required of $150,000.00 (one hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dollars) in new machinery, new buildings or new equipment for your company.^*

Minimum investment required if you want to set up your company anywhere in Costa Rica and/or outside of a Free Trade Zone and yet get its benefits: $2,000,000.00 (two million U.S. dollars)

(*) You may associate with other businesses that want to acquire the benefits. The sum of each business investment must equal $150,000.00.

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Industry:

Your company must do one of the following businesses:

• Manufacturing, processing, operating, producing, repairing, maintaining, or ensemble a product to be exported
  
  
• Handling, wrapping, or redistributing a non-traditional Costa Rican product
  
  

Or

• Assessing the manufacturing process of products to be exported for customers based on Free Trade Zones in Costa Rica or outside of Costa Rica⁽¹⁾

• Managing prospective FTZ's developments⁽²⁾
  
  
• Managing of operations of dockyards, shipyards, and floating or dry docks
  
  
• Researching for inventions that enhance the FTZ, the Costa Rican Industry, the foreign trade of Costa Rica, and/or biotechnology and high tech worldwide industries.

⁽¹⁾ Banks, finance and insurance companies can set up their business facilities on a Free Trade Zone, but they will not be granted with the benefits. Banks doing business in a Free Trade Zones must abide by the national banking system in Costa Rica.

⁽²⁾ Companies will lose their benefits if a company that was not granted the FTZ benefits rents or buys a facility inside that new Free Trade Zone.

Legal:

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