How Free Zones Work in El Salvador

Three ways to use the regime

Source: Dirección General de Aduanas: Free Zones Law, consolidated text with Decree 493 of 23 December 2025; Dirección General de Aduanas: International Services Law, consolidated text with Decree 497 of 14 January 2026 (PDF, in Spanish)^1,5

In a free zone or DPA, goods are treated as outside the national customs territory: machinery, raw materials and inputs enter without import duties or VAT for as long as the company operates. A DPA is defined in the law as an area where goods enter with duties suspended for processing and re-export, and where capital goods can stay indefinitely.¹

Who does what

• Developer (desarrollista): builds the zone. A new zone needs at least 30,000 m² and 30% green area, of which at least 10% inside the zone or next to it.
• Administrator: runs the zone day to day, controls entry and exit of goods and works with the customs office inside the zone.
• User (usuario): the company that produces, assembles, processes or trades goods inside the zone.
• Ministry of Economy (MINEC): authorises developers, administrators, users and DPAs by ministerial agreement published in the Diario Oficial, after an opinion from the Ministry of Finance.
• Customs (Dirección General de Aduanas): has a delegation in each zone and checks that imported goods are re-exported or used as the law allows.

Source: Dirección General de Aduanas: Free Zones Law, consolidated text with Decree 493 of 23 December 2025¹

What can be done in a zone

• Production, assembly, manufacturing, processing or trading of industrial goods in chapter 3 and chapters 25 onwards of the Central American tariff system.
• Fishing for industrial processing, aquaculture, food and animal feed.
• Growing and processing plants in greenhouses or laboratories, and breeding amphibians and reptiles in captivity.
• Dehydration of ethyl alcohol, and products that use alcohol as an input when the final product is not an alcoholic drink.
• Services linked to production between beneficiaries, such as design, cutting, printing, embroidery, washing, quality control, recycling and repair.

Source: Dirección General de Aduanas: Free Zones Law, consolidated text with Decree 493 of 23 December 2025¹

The law excludes oil, gas and fuels, cement and clinker, scrap metal, minerals from Salvadoran mining, explosives and radioactive materials, polluting goods, sugar (except as an input for chemicals, cosmetics, medicines and food), alcohol outside the allowed cases, synthetic fibre sacks, food supply to employees and leasing of imported machinery.¹

Selling to the local market

Goods that a free zone company sells into El Salvador go through the same customs procedure as any import from abroad. Traders pay import duties and taxes on the customs value; when the goods come from a free zone producer, the value of the Salvadoran content is left out of the base. The US State Department notes that local sales are taxed in proportion to the sales made.^1,2

In the other direction, local suppliers sell goods and services that the beneficiary needs at a 0% VAT rate, including construction materials for its own buildings.¹

How many companies

Source: U.S. Department of State: 2026 Investment Climate Statements, El Salvador; CAMTEX: history of the free zones; Ministry of Economy (MINEC): free zone users by zone, transparency portal, 2024^2,4,6

The counts differ because the sources use different dates and some include DPAs or companies registered in more than one zone. Ask MINEC or CAMTEX for the current figure before you rely on it.