Quito, Ecuador: Special Economic Development Zone
Creating a space for investment opportunities, innovative production chains, better export processes, and employment for a young population
Perched high in the Andes, the Metropolitan District of Quito is the capital of Ecuador and home to over 2.6 million residents. At 2,800 meters above sea level, the city sits amid volcanoes and deep valleys, with records of human settlements dating back over 10,000 years. The city of today was founded in 1541, and the exceedingly well-preserved colonial city center was one of the first World Cultural Heritage Sites ever declared by UNESCO in 1978, not only for its architecture but also because of its dramatic landscape and biological diversity. Modern Quito is a socially collaborative and demographically young city driven to become a prosperous urban center while addressing structural inequalities.
Project Background
A priority of Quito’s resilience agenda is to further encourage economic diversification, while enhancing an overall focus on sustainability and innovation. With one out of every two Quiteños younger than 29-years-old, and an economy highly dependent on external factors like oil prices and commodity export markets, the city wants to attract investment, generate demand for skilled employees, and incentivize value-added production.
This project therefore aims to establish a Special Economic Development Zone (Zede Quito) on 207 hectares of land near the new Quito International Airport — connectivity to be complimented by investments in high quality road infrastructure leading throughout the country.
In establishing the zone, the city will create new tax, tariff, and customs incentives to attract investments and increase the competitiveness of targeted economic sectors. The zone will in turn create new supply chains and increase exports and opportunities for skilled employment in the city by centralizing logistical services and other benefits such as cost reduction, international competitiveness, and tax benefits to a single location.
In addition to being an important regional financial center, the metropolitan zone of Quito achieves high marks for education, human talent, infrastructure, and access to credit, all of which are significantly better than elsewhere in Ecuador. Moreover, the Special Economic Development Zone is an attractive opportunity in this moment as its development coincides not only with the opening of the new airport but also with the construction of the city’s first metro line, whose integration with existing mobility systems represents a historic opportunity to rethink urban development and its dynamics.
Project Resilience Value and Impact
The city’s social capital is characterized by a long tradition of solidarity, ingenuity, collaboration, and participation in decision-making processes for its diverse communities. But the city’s current age distribution, combined with shifting macroeconomic trends, mean that Quito today has an urgent need to overcome a lack of job opportunities and a mis-match between jobtraining programs and job-market demands.
The Special Economic Development Zone is recognized as an opportunity to counter these trends within a concerted hub of innovation that will be the leading edge of city-wide efforts. City leadership is committed to incentivizing the production of higher value goods and leveraging the productivity of their young population.
Project Status and Opportunity
Prefeasibility studies for the Special Economic Development Zone have already been developed. Work on infrastructure development will start in 2018 and will require investors, developers, and infrastructure managers.
For more information or to get involved:
David Jacome, Chief Resilience Officer | quitoresiliente@gmail.com
