Curacao seeks “normalize” the exchange with Venezuela, which came to represent 60% of the trade in its free zone, key to its economy. A year ago the borders reopened after a long closure, but there is another obstacle: the immigration restrictions on Venezuelans, who since 2021 need a visa to enter the island.
The visa was imposed in the midst of the gigantic exodus due to the economic and political crisis that, according to the UN, has led more than seven million people to leave Venezuela. Curacao, with about 150,000 inhabitants, has received about 14,000 Venezuelans.
At the same time, between 2019 and 2023, diplomatic differences kept Venezuela’s borders closed with Curacao, Aruba and Bonaire – autonomous Caribbean islands belonging to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
“The years of closure have been an immense blow,” Jacqueline Jansen, general director of CURINDE (Curaçao Industrial & International Trade Development Company), a mixed state and private organization that governs the free zones in this Caribbean country, told AFP.
“We have to take advantage of the fact that the border has opened again. “Many people don’t know how to get a visa (…), so that’s an important issue,” he recorded.
Given the reopening, CURINDE launched a program to facilitate visa procedures for Venezuelan merchants, with the aim of organizing groups that arrive by invitation to reactivate trade.
A pilot project was carried out with visitors from Cuba. “Each group consisted of more or less 20 or 30 people. (…) Foreign Affairs of Curaçao considered that it went well and they said: ‘Ok, if there is a market (in Venezuela), why not?’ Jansen explained.
Netherlands “Simply, in relation to the visa, they want to have control” and “they are recognizing us as a company that can carry out that control”he assures.
Paralysis
Giovanni Boekhoudt, customer account manager at CURINDE, explained that “Venezuela was responsible for 60% of free zone trade”with about 20,000 visitors per year and an exchange that exceeded 400 million dollars.
The closure and the pandemic caused paralysis, with the number of Venezuelan visitors plummeting to a low of just 22 in 2021.
The closure of borders led merchants with greater muscle to triangulate shipments through countries like Jamaica, which increased costs and slowed down small capital, Boekhoudt stressed.
The Curacao port free zone was established in the late 1950s, with an area of 300,000 km2 of huge container yards and warehouses, focused mainly on the textile and pharmaceutical sectors and also on products such as alcohol and tobacco.
Their business volumes are modest compared to the free zones of Panama, the Dominican Republic or Costa Rica, but they have an important weight in the island’s GDP. 5%according to the Association of Free Zones of the Americas (AZFA).
AZFA estimates exports from the more than 700 free zones established in the region at US$38 billion.
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Source: Gestion
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