Gustavo González de Vega, president of the Free Trade Zone Association of the Americas (AZFA), today outlined the business opportunities offered by the Latin American Free Trade Zones between America, Africa and Europe, during the FOCOMAR Business Breakfast, organized by the Bay of Cadiz BIC with the collaboration of the Port Authority.
The event, which has been attended by almost a hundred people, including administrations, institutions, organizations and SMEs in the logistics-port sector, is being held within the framework of the FOCOMAR Project, “Promoting Maritime Trade of SMEs by strengthening cooperation between ports and companies”, an initiative co-financed by the ERDF, within the first call of the Interreg V A Spain-Portugal Cooperation Programme (POCTEP) 2014-2020 and the Institute of Employment and Technological Development of the Provincial Council of Cadiz.
“Spain occupies a privileged geographical position for these commercial relations between America, Africa and Europe”, and, within Spain, “Cadiz must be a spearhead for contact from Europe to America”, said the president of AZFA, who considers that “the free trade zones are a network where relations can be established between the three continents, taking advantage of the fact that each free trade zone of the 25 countries where AZFA has a presence is an ideal space in which to develop business and commercial exchanges exempt from tariffs and indirect taxes”.
For Gustavo González, “Cadiz has an international vocation and the objective is to discover what business opportunities Cadiz entrepreneurs have on the other side of the Atlantic and with their close neighbours in Africa”. Likewise, González highlighted the opportunity that the Latin American free zones offer to Spanish and European investors to establish themselves in the neighbouring continent and consolidate commercial relations between America and Europe.
In this sense, the president of the Free Zone Association of the Americas has given some keys as adding value to production in the stages of pre- and post-production as a tool to anchor companies. Technology, sustainability, the reconversion of logistic spaces into spaces of innovation, the generation of regional value chains, the off shore business, and ship repair, among many others, are some of the opportunities that Gustavo Gonzalez de Vega has put on the table, besides explaining the advantages that the free zones offer for the implementation of any investment project.