Exports of goods from free trade zones grew by 3.8%, increasing from US$7,765.49 million to US$8,060.03 million.
The professionalization and increasing levels of productivity in free trade zones have a positive impact on employment. Analyzing the evolution of “export value per direct employee,” according to export statistics from the General Directorate of Customs (DGA) and publications from the National Council of Export Free Zones (CNZFE), the export value per direct employee grew by 29.2 percent between 2019 and 2023, reaching an average value of US$40,774 (2023).
Now, it has reached a value of US$281.81 in April 2024, for an additional increase of 29.8% between 2019 and 2024, as proposed by economist Henri Hebrard in his analysis “Dominican economy post-COVID: without free trade zones, there is no paradise.”
Hebrard explained that the reference minimum wage in the free trade zone sector has accumulated a growth of 67% between 2013 and 2024.
For comparison, the average salary in the Dominican economy reported by the Pensions Superintendence (SIPEN) only recorded a growth of 25.2% between 2013 and 2024, increasing from US$448.65 (December 2023) to US$561.69 (February 2024).
He argued that free trade zones make increasingly valuable contributions to the Dominican economy, both at the macro level (generation of foreign exchange and balance of payments) and at the level of the ordinary citizen, with significant gains in terms of more and better jobs in the 28 provinces of the country that host free trade zone parks.
According to official data from the DGA, exports of goods from free trade zones grew by 3.8 percent, increasing from US$7,765.49 million (2022) to US$8,060.03 million (2023).
The growth measured between 2019 and 2023 reached 34.3%, equivalent to an additional contribution valued at US$2,058.85 million, while during this same period, the rest of Dominican exports experienced a significant contraction of 5.0%, decreasing from US$4,077.96 million (2019) to US$3,873.37 million (2023).
Furthermore, the participation of free trade zones in the total value of Dominican exports grew significantly, increasing from 59.5% in 2019 to 67.5% in 2023, demonstrating the increasing and increasingly fundamental role of this sector.
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