IV CONFERENCE

The IV Latin American Conference of Free Zones was held between 30th August and 1st September 2000, organized by the Free Zone Association of this country (AZOFRAS). This entity reach its aims by making easy, the direction and advise of the enterprises framed as free zones. Thus, AZOFRAS, is the representative of Free Zones under the Government and other private organizations.

The IV Conference, besides counting on the presence of state authorities, met more than 300 representatives of important Latin American entities, that assisted to an interesting forum both for free zones and for the managerial and investment sector. Cadiz Free Zone, with an important Latin American tradition, was represented by its maximum responsible, the State Delegate, the Manager and the Technical personal of the Foreign Trade Department.

The main topic of the Congress was "Free Zones face the Technological Change" and the conferences and debates had topics such as foreign trade and free zones, free zones as instruments of regional development, customs regulation or free zones as platforms of global services.

V CONFERENCE

The V Latin American Conference of Free Zones was held at Panama between 29-31 August 2001 and was named "Business Development at the Free Zones before the New World Environment". This fifth edition was organized by Colon Free Zone, the biggest of the western hemisphere, and the greatest center of goods distribution for Latin America and The Caribbean.

The inaugural session counted on the presence of the Panama president, Mireya Moscoso, and also other Government representatives. The forum was the meeting place for free zone experts, managers and investors from different organizations that represented 350 entities from all Latin America, and the most important free zones of Colombia, Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador and Mexico, among others. On the hand of Cadiz, the State Special Delegate, Miguel Osuna, the General Manager of the Organization and Foreign Trade, María Teresa Mut, and the Foreign Trade Manager José Francisco Pedrejón, assisted to the conference. It was in this V Conference that Cadiz Free Zone presented its candidature and Cadiz was elected for the VI edition.

Some of the topics were the free zones as instruments of promotion and logistic strategies in the world environment, the logistic strategies for the free zones or the ALCA effects in the potential of free zones as trade and development focuses.