The manicured industrial park, with its steel and glass buildings, could easily blend in along one of Silicon Valley’s main tech strips – and that is just the impression that Isidoro Hodara wants to create. A long-time guru of foreign trade and investment, Mr Hodara is vice-president of Zonamerica, Uruguay’s ambitious attempt to create a free trade zone (FTZ) for companies that want to farm out operations in far-flung, lower-cost offices.
So far, Mr Hodara and Zonamerica president Orlando Dovat have bragging rights. The FTZ opened its doors 15 years ago, just when the global trend of offshoring and outsourcing became popular. On a 92-hectare campus, located on the outskirts of Montevideo, it began offering corporations a high-end technology backbone, complete with networking services and back-up data centres. Also on offer is a teleport for satellite communications, video-conference facilities and multiple telecom providers.
