New E-Commerce Centre Nearly Complete In Curacao

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

23 August 2001

We are grateful to Mr Guido H Jansen of PricewaterhouseCoopers for providing information for this story: guido.h.jansen@an.pwcglobal.com

A new multifunctional datacenter, the 'heart' of the brand new E-Commerce Park project on Curacao (www.e-commercepark.com) in the Netherlands Antilles will be operational on 1st November. Initial bandwidth of 45 megabytes will be up to the highest international standards and can be expanded at any time, say the E-Commerce Park's owners. The bandwidth is being provided under a contract signed between the E-Commerce Park, United Telecom Services, the biggest local telecom provider on the island and New World Networks, established in Miami. UTS and NWN are both shareholders in the Arcos fibre-optic cable that delivers enormous capacity to the Caribbean region.

Besides bandwidth another important and key element of the E-commerce Park is the location of the building, which is next door to the UTS building with its direct connection to the backbone of the most important telecom cables. This will result in high-quality, continuous 24-on-7 service from their so-called Network Operating Center, something that many offshore jurisdictions have difficulty in offering to Internet companies needing to sustain round-the-clock service to their markets.

The foundation stone of the datacenter was laid at the part-completed E-Commerce building last Friday. Building began at the Park in July and $8m has been committed to the project already. The 2700 m2 office building is almost finished. This building also houses companies that provide services for global e-commerce companies; the office building together with the datacenter will provide a complete infrastructure for offshore e-commerce companies. E-Commerce Park calls this 'one stop shopping'. The shareholders of E-Commerce Park N.V. are already making plans to expand.

The E-Commerce Park provides facilities for global offshore internet companies that (re)locate their activities to Curacao. A company that establishes in the E-Commerce Park building will have important tax incentives under legislation put in place last March which provides for the establishment of tax-privileged 'E-Zone areas'. A company that establishes in the E-zone pays 2% profit tax, no import duties and sales tax. The expatriate employees of a global internet company established in the E-zones of Curacao are entitled to a special income tax regime.

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