Proposed Free Trade Zone For Milan

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

23 June 2010

As part of the proposed reforms to decentralise taxes and expenditure in Italy, the mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, has put forward the idea of making Milan into a free trade zone.

Moratti has suggested that specific tax incentives could be granted to new investments in the city by domestic or foreign companies. Such incentives would, in that way, be part of measures to boost the current economic recovery, both in the city and in Italy as a whole.

According to Moratti, investment has always been considered to be the “engine of recovery” in Italy, particularly in Milan, which is ranked second in Europe for the amount of investment in research and development, and whose 280,000 businesses produce 10% of Italy’s gross domestic product.

For others, Moratti’s proposal was impractical and unlikely to be acceptable to the government. In particular, it was said, the mayor should work instead towards a significant reduction in the bureaucracy confronted by those wishing to set up a business in Milan.

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